Whispers in the Dark
by Disguise of Carnivorism
Summary: Light Yagami's path is gilded with sorrow and death, his foot-steps drowned in blood. Angel of death, drinker of souls... his touch withers and destroys with the power of the gods. /super abandoned. last half unedited/
1. I Remember

**MORE IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: This will be forever incomplete. Read and enjoy, please, but expect to remain forever unsatisfied (not to mention really really confused).**

**Author's Note: Why hello. This is the prologue to Wid or, alternately, Whispers. Don't expect to understand it immediately, because you won't. Sorry. **

**Co-writer's Note: It happens to be a crossover of a good number of tales, but Death Note and The Darkangel Trilogy, by Meredith Ann Pierce, formulate the majority of the plot.  
**

**A/N: Thank the Grammar Nazi for saving the day, everyone; without her, my spelling would be the death of all who read this. It'd look like a Mary-Sue centric fic if I left the words alone.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note or The Darkangel Trilogy and am not going to waste my time copying and pasting this into further chapters. If you're that finicky, come back and reread it a few times. **

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I Remember

_The blackened apple falls from his hand, _

_arcing through the air, _

_and he can not help but follow its blurring, _

_graceful crescent _

_even as it falls silently to the floor_

_It rolls until it brushes against pale fingers, glowing crimson in the lightless room_

Cold eyes watched as the flames rose. Everything, _everything_ burned, wasting away to ash in the heat of the inferno as bodies disintegrated and foundations crumbled. By morning, nothing would remain but splintered bones and charred stone. The wanderer sneered in contempt as the hell-sent blaze tore through all that remained of his humanity, spiraling through houses and trees in graceful, undulating arcs of light and color; crackling in a rushing, overpowering deluge of sound and force.

Closing his eyes and shutting off his thoughts, he turned his mind away from the memories that engulfed him, for they too were screaming with the pain of death.

Someone had once told him that he had a heart of snow—something so cold and icy that it tore away the flesh of all who tried to touch it. They were wrong, though. His heart was fire, a skillful dancer who changed tempo on accordance to the fuel given; it fed off of fear and anguish and turned them into little more than another step in its elegant waltz. Those who touched it didn't freeze—they burned.

He continued to watch the world below him as its ashes fell away into the night. He could hear the tolling of church bells calling out to him from across the abyss, shrieking with shattered memories and brittle promises even as the walls of his long-ago home collapsed piece by piece and shard by shard, enshrouded by a veil of smoke and fire. Those bells never could drown out the howling; they had merely accompanied it in a hellish cacophony. Nothing had changed—each sonorous ring vibrated throughout the night, clanging against the devouring fire. The first time he heard the peals, he had thought them beautiful, but perhaps… perhaps even that had been a lie, another broken promise.

They had promised him that one day he would be normal, sworn to him he would be able to feel, to love, to be… happy. They had promised to take him away from the shadows in the nightmares and draw him into their own personal Eden, but the light had not been bright enough to blind him from what he was meant to be; nor had the darkness been deep enough to swallow the shards of hope that still clung to his heart, cutting the dancer's feet with its hollow words and empty offerings.

The young wanderer with the aged eyes shifted his gaze to the sky, watching as white flakes began to fall. He breathed deeply. Seven years ago, he had stood on this very hill, back when his heart had been as cold and pure as the ice that fell from the stars. How long had it been since his heart had melted away inside his chest, freeing the dancer from its frozen chains? Tedium, ignorance, innocence; all had fallen away with the death of each bride and the pealing of every bell to be gradually replaced with horror—the horror of a naïve child confronted with (at that time, to him) a monster worse than death.

Terror.

It had kept him locked in that place. A dark shadow had haunted him for the past seven years—the fear that one day the thin, bony fingers would wrap around his own neck and steal his soul. He still feared it, during the night, in the absence of the stars; he could practically hear the angel scribbling away, hunched over his work in concentration… he could still feel that cold, dead gaze linger upon him as it pondered whether or not he was too bothersome to keep.

"_Is Raito-kun afraid of the dark?" _

Yes, he was afraid—of course he was. Who wouldn't be afraid of _him_, the angel of death with skin empty as snow and eyes of colorless crystal; the pale angel with shadows of wings whose smile chilled him to the core and hands destroyed everything they touched; an otherworldly being from a world where color no longer existed? In the darkened realms only black and white remained, and like the angel, he was expected to see the world in that way. He needed to be completely color blind, but he didn't want it—not anymore.

He would see the rainbow spectrum again.

_He doesn't breathe_

_He doesn't think_

_He doesn't feel,_

_but around him the world collapses_

He stared at the candelabras and their waxen crowns lit with small flames that shimmered slowly, illuminating the vast cavern impartially, leaving gaping vacuums of darkness among the shuddering, sickly light. Some rose like cat tails from the misting lake, playing tricks on his perceptions and dangling a veil behind his eyes. For the first time in three years, Light experienced a vague sense of homecoming—shuddering images of crusted stone walls, rainbow-hued windows and flickering candles pushed through his concentration, but he stalled his thoughts and continued to wade through the waist-deep water, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the dimly-lit path before him. A chorus of voices drifted down into the labyrinth, swelling and floating around him; he tuned each of them out as he crept along with a silence born of need.

All he needed was a name, a simple name, and it would be done.

He knew that—just like humans—these demons could die and—_just like humans_—they feared it. They feared and they fought, those that could, goading him into failure with vulgar expletives and carefully directed blows… but in the end, none could save themselves. He didn't make mistakes, the dead darkangels had discovered as their names were uttered and their bodies torn apart, because every weakness he had would be used against him.

As he drew nearer to the source of light, the drifting tempest of the gasping clangs of an organ assaulted his ears. Again, there was the odd sense of being home—there had been an organ there, too, for as long as he could remember. That organ had often made the same incoherent noises of rage and pain; he never _had_ been able to make it sing.

This, though… this wasn't like the stumbling mass of fingers and discordant notes he remembered playing with; no, this was horrifying; this was beautiful. It was everything that the world was made of written into a simple melody of deliberate dissonance that wove through the air with a complexity that, despite his intelligence, he could not follow.

He stopped. It was beautiful, it was terrifying—it was like looking in a mirror.

He saw himself crouching at the organ, sloppily throwing chords together, jamming down on the keys; anything. _Anything_ to drown out the screaming. He saw himself crying, weeping, and betrayed by his naïve faith in justice and righteousness and innocence. There was no such thing as true evil—only accidents—in this world, they had said—it was a remote concept, irrelevant and incomprehensible to all, he had thought. There was no wrong and, by default, no right, they had said, but it had all been little more than a fabrication composed by ignorance and inexperience.

Finally, he had learned, and had tried to bury the knowledge in a progression of angry, stumbling chords from a child's small hands. They hadn't had the capacity to contain it all.

He didn't want to move nearer, but he had to; he had to see that small weeping child. He had to make him see the jagged world built of broken shards of truth, and so he stepped closer again, inching his way towards the source of the music and the light.

When he stood on the stone steps of the music's lair, he was a part of the music—the crying, pounding music so heavenly and earthly that the mere act of listening made his heart break again and again, cracking, fracturing, crumbling into emotionless dust. When he reached the organ, the music stopped; the fingers came to a halt and rested upon the graying keys, curved elegantly in pose of a practiced musician.

They were not the fingers of a child but the fingers of a skeleton—pale, jagged, bony fingers. Nor was the being that owned them a child; he was tall and lean and like a starving man as he hunched over his music in search of life. His clothes hung limply from his bone-white skin in a sickly manner; twelve dark wings sprang from his back, deforming the shadow cast by the candle's softly steady glow. Before him, papers filled with empty lines and crossed-out stanzas sat in calculated disarray, balanced between the use-worn ivories and glimmering pipes.

Slowly, he began to laugh a hoarse, dark chuckle that even in its beauty sounded pained and tortured. The melodious sound filled the silence, sharpening and refining it into a razor point.

He didn't turn when he began to speak, but simply sat with a stillness mirroring that of a wind-worn, twisted gargoyle. "Erik wondered when you would come," were his words, spoken with the weary patience of a man who had seen too much and lived too long.

"You remember your name." Light didn't speak with anger or aggression as he had intended; the words emerged from his lips as an emotionless statement of fact.

The vampyre laughed again with a cold, demeaning chuckle that bordered on hysterical giggles. "Oh, yes, Erik remembers many things, now. He remembers everything; everything he had ever forgotten…." The darkangel trailed off slowly. His shoulders straightened and his head tilted to the side, shifting the few remaining wisps of hair that hung limply from his pale skull. "That is what Erik does now. He remembers… he remembers what others have forgotten in their haste. After all, what does he have left but memories? Memories and dust. One day, those will abandon him, too.

"She was very beautiful—_so_ beautiful—when he first saw her. What a wondrous voice—it was beautiful, yes… all it needed was someone to help it grow, and Erik knew that he was the only one who could teach her. That's why—that is why he took her." The great wings rose, concealing his waifish profile from Light's view, and shuddered as sobbing laughter filled the room.

"You killed her, Manasseh," said Light slowly, remembering the wasted bodies, the broken and withered, mindless creatures. It was from those days that he had learned what hatred truly was—betrayal, abandonment.

"No, Erik never… he never touched her. Not once." The angel continued to snigger at whatever promise those words were supposed to represent. He seemed to almost be choking on the giggles as they rose from his lungs, gasping on them as a dying man struggles for breath.

"Do you really believe that?" Light asked, the hatred boiling inside him, inflaming his senses and lighting his world on fire.

The darkangel turned, but where clear eyes devoid of life should have rested, twin pits of molten gold glowered. "Don't you know, Boy? She is the reason the music died."

_He wants to die_

_He wants to lie down and die, shove a stake into his still heart and force it into oblivion, to stop his pale hands from touching, from destroying another life_

_To halt the artist's betraying hands_

_To stop himself from taking her life_

"'What am I?' I am an Icarus, a member of the proud race of Darkangels, black gods from the deepest pits of hell come to enact divine judgment on the human race; a monstrous beast who steals the souls of maidens and drinks their blood as a toast to mortality. As for 'Who am I?'…. The world calls me Judah, but to those few who know me I am known as L." The pale figure smiled, his face beaming in childish delight at his speech.

Once again, he was struck by how pale the creature was—his skin seemed to be almost carved from marble and looked jagged to the touch; his bones seemed to jut out from his skin in exaggeration, like those of a starving child; his bony shoulders were constantly rolled forward, decreasing the creature's height by several inches; and his back was cloaked by a dozen dusky wings. Oddest of all was the creature's colorless, thin face—vacant eyes framed by a mop of chaotic silver hair that made him wonder if the angel spent his time hanging from the ceiling.

"L?" The boy's tongue tripped over the foreign syllable as he watched the Icarus's wings twitch in irritation.

"You may call me Ryuzaki, because frankly, your mispronunciation of my name will drive me mad. We cannot have that, can we?" The darkangel shook his head and began to pace in front of the boy, looking him up and down with shrewd, blank eyes.

"You are certainly not a muscle man, but then again, you are not needed for heavy lifting." He tugged on the boy's thin shirt sleeve, lifting up his arm and clicking his tongue softly, with a mocking tinge that carried from his voice. The icy chill of the creature's skin seeped through the cloth with ease, freezing the boy to the core. "Still, you should probably attempt to build muscle. Your arms look like candlesticks! What do they feed you children these days?" The Icarus breathed out and dropped the child's arm, then stepped back. "Ah, well," came a sigh of self-pitying mourning. "We have our work cut out for us."

_He sees them, all the faces of his past_

_gathered around him,_

_each face masked with a trail of flowing tears…_

_all crying over him, _

_for him, _

_beside him_

She was so pale—so deathly pale and thin, like a glass doll on the verge of breaking into pieces, with cracks that were all too obvious in her transparent state, as she hunched over in the corner, her arms clutching her legs desperately as she tried to control her shivering. A thin trail of dried blood trekked its way from her forehead down to her cheek and her ebony hair had been pulled back into a hastily-made ponytail, leaving several strands to frizz across her face. Surrounding her were the writhing dark shadows that even candlelight could not wash away, embracing her in their relentlessly lifeless grip.

A poor girl whose life had been torn apart by his own lifeless hands—that's all she was.

He did not try to speak even as he set down the tray of carefully-prepared food in front of her bare feet. She shifted away from his gloved hand and farther into the corner as if the mere proximity burned. He paused before taking his hands away and standing up, and she did not relax, instead remaining tightly curled into a ball in an attempt to protect herself from the wrath she was certain he would inflict upon her. She did not look up at him when he stood, preferring to keep her eyes on the stony floor rather than see her death—eyes empty as death—staring down at her.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" he said softly, the words leaving a bitter taste on his lips. The dark-haired girl looked up, betrayal etched into the black depths of her eyes. Her arms tightened around her knees and her mouth set into in a frown. "To know that everything you have ever been told… everything you believe in is a lie?"

Still, she remained stubbornly silent, refusing to so much as twitch in his presence. It was only when he left that she would steal a moment to scream and curse the day he had stolen her from the family that she no doubt believed missed her and to damn her gods to hell, all the while unaware exactly what it was that had spirited her away. But deep down, she must have realized that she would never leave this place again—that after sunset it would no longer matter which relatives missed her or what dreams she had left waiting at home. Eventually, they would forget her or mourn her passing, all-the-while blissfully ignorant of the curse placed upon her.

Ignorant, just as his own family had been when he had returned home. Even then, they had refused to accept the truth.

With that, he turned from the human and proceeded to walk down the stairs, ignoring the sound of breaking dishes behind him and the wretched sobbing that would haunt his past and present… the sobbing of a dying human whose fate was inescapable.

_The pain_

_All he can see is the pain etched out before him_

_He cries out but hears only silence_

_he watches the world with eyes tightly closed _

_he hears the voices that do not speak_

_They whisper to him of things he cannot understand, _

_of things he will not understand_

"Wait one moment." The darkangel turned from his drawings and strode towards an overfilled closet, pulling out an assortment of clothing and obscure items whose purposes the prisoner could only guess. Finally, he lifted a long over-coat, shook out a layer of dust and handed her the garment. She felt the worn cloth in her hands and looked up at him in confusion.

Her nose twitched. "What's this supposed to be?" She turned the coat over and traced the back's silver insignia—an intricate coil of interweaving and overlapping thorns, crowned in the center with a crimson flower's bud.

"It's a gift, for you." The darkangel came and sat down beside her, climbing over a stack of large multi-lingual dictionaries. Despite the gift, the prisoner could not help but feel a small sense of foreboding.

"But, I don't understand…." She held up the jacket in front of her once more, noting the ludicrous array of straps and buckles lining the sleeves, then looked towards him in confusion before placing the gift on the floor.

"Humans generally do not; you don't have to understand it. In fact, it would be better if you did not—I would prefer if you did not." He clasped his black gloved hands together and stared at the floor, obviously in deep thought.

"What are you talking about?" She fixed the darkangel with an inquiring glare, demanding an answer, but all he did was turn away from her with a small twitch of his lips and jump off the stack of books in a single leap. Her next question came quickly, with a shake of her head: "Are you just going to lie to me again and keep me in the dark like you always do?" Clambering off her seat of books, she ran after the retreating vampyre.

He stopped and turned to watch her pursuit and a moment's silence waited. "No," he began, his eyes following a mark on the ceiling, "it is I who am kept in the never-ending darkness. Not you. Never you."

He turned and walked from the room, retreating to the dark from which he claimed to deliver her.

_Beside him is the girl, the broken girl who's covered in blood_

_So much blood, so much blood_

_It stains the ground, it flows down the walls_

_He can't take it, _

_he doesn't want to see it there but _

_he can smell it_

_He can feel it _

_on his hands_

_soaking them to the core_

_He can taste it on his lips, _

_taste it on his breath_

_One last trace of her before she collapsed into dust_

_The onslaught of images continues to trample him,_

_forcing him into that bleeding floor_

She blinked slowly before turning towards him, eyes clouded from the strain of her desperate attempt at escape. He wondered how long it had taken her to collapse against the pavement, how many steps it had taken before her legs refused to move—how many miles it took for her to realize exactly where her current predicament had placed her.

"There really is no escape from this place, is there?"

Outside the rain patted against the tin roof; he looked up, once again reminding himself that he would have to replace the rusting sheets. The prisoner grabbed her dark hair and began wringing out the excess water, not removing her questioning eyes from the darkangel.

"You can't have expected to get far in this weather; you should've waited until the rain cleared up," he said slowly, without a hint of admonition in a tone that bordered on advisory—it nearly sounded as if he were giving her tips on how to successfully pull off her next attempt at flight. The vampyre looked through the make-shift window and watched as the bombardment of rain steadily thickened.

"It doesn't matter what the weather is, though. If I had kept walking, I wouldn't have found anything. You picked a very nice location for your prison—a place where no one but you can escape." She laughed slightly before coughing into her hand; he waited for her to cease the hacking before beginning his explanation.

"A prison?" His humorless words would have been mistaken for emotionless, were a tinge of bitter anger not apparent. "I am glad you still have the naïvety to think of me like _this—_" and he paused, clinging to his calm, "as the demon whose only purpose in life is to tear out the hearts of innocent girls like yourself." He sighed, reaching to his side and handing her a glass of steaming tea.

"How do I know this isn't poisoned?" Her voice was cold, but her eyes flamed with the rebellious, fear-ridden anger of a cornered beast. She set down the glass on the floor beside the darkangel's black-clad feet.

"If I had wanted you killed, I would have left you to freeze to death instead of hauling your soaked carcass through the pouring rain." His eyes met hers and the fires clashed—each flared equally as he dared her to grasp at the words left unspoken.

The silence around them froze as her eyes narrowed, boring into his with savage defiance.

"Or you could have touched me," finished the prisoner in a soft tone that completely contradicted her granite expression, staring down at her captor's carefully gloved hands.

His eyes widened and the ashes swirled.

"There are too many ways in which a human can die; for me, there is only one."

_He knows that the blood isn't real,_

_that the stone angels weeping over his shoulders aren't real_

_The faces, the tears, the pain_

_He knows it's not there_

_and yet he feels it all the same, _

_he's drowning all the same_

_The immortal god drowns in a pool of forgotten dreams, while alongside him _

_tears fall from a dead girl's eyes_

The new man stood hunched over in a deranged manner, his long, coarse hair pulled back into a messy pony-tail. Like the angel, he seemed almost sickly to the boy; pale skin clung to his bones in a starved manner—and yet his bright, crimson eyes seem to blaze under the practically non-existent black brows with a fervor so different from the dull haze or feverish spark he had recognized in the starving men lurking at the edge of his childhood home.

He spoke with a rushed tone and a foreign accent, but with more familiarity than any disoriented traveler: "Greetings, L. I bring news of the outside world, because—believe me, L—prior to what I had thought, there is a world outside of this dismal corner you've claimed as your own, and it is vast and wondrous and so ready for the picking." The traveler laughed, leaning back and closing his eyes before reforming into the slouch. All at once, the child was struck by the similarities between this man—this stranger—and his own captor. The familiar hunch in the shoulders, the bare, pale feet, the wild, chaotic hair—his man seemed to almost be a colored, human version of the Icarus.

"Are people fruit, B?" The darkangel smiled at some personal, inside joke, and stuck one pale thumb between his lips, indicating that the wheels in his head were in motion once more. The boy could not help but slink farther back into the shadows, inching his way over towards the stairs; this man had not come to see him and would not be inclined to sympathy.

"No, of course not! They are cattle—dumb, mangy beasts! It is we, the Icari, who are meant to _rule_ them—not be trapped by our own genius! L, we could be gods. We _are_ gods; we've only to take our throne." Here, he held out his hands towards the darkangel, red eyes gleaming with possibility.

The vampyre merely cocked his head, expression remaining neutral. "B has a god complex," stated the Icarus in finality, turning around, walking casually past Light and hopping up the stairs leading to the bell tower with his dark wings falling off his shoulders like a poorly tailored cape. Even after he had passed, the child could smell the icy chill of death that wrapped around the vampyre's hands.

The foreigner rushed to follow the vampyre up the stairs and caught sight of the boy for the first time. He stopped. His back straightened and with an insect-like movement, he reached forward and grabbed the boy out from the shadows and back into the light.

"And who the hell is this runt supposed to be?" shouted the stranger; in an almost imperceptible split of time, he had been transformed from an idealistic dreamer to the furious monster who held the boy in a choking grasp. "Is he my replacement, L? Is this little bastard my replacement?"

The darkangel's ascent slowed to a halt as the boy struggled in the man's grip, his lungs aching for breath. Finally, the being turned and glared at the young man below him in accusation, his crystal eyes boiling in rage.

"You dare to call him an illegitimate son? You dare to look at his human features and call them counterfeit? Look in a mirror, B—what do you see? You are the ultimate disgrace, a child that is neither human nor demon—a monster without a definition to place it in the world. I may be a monster, but at least I do not doubt that I am one. But you! What can you possibly know of what it means to understand what you truly are?" The vampyre jumped down from his position on the spiraling stairs to right before of the stranger's face, his clear-cut eyes driving deep into the man's skull. Startled, the man dropped the brunette child and stared back at the darkangel. "You think you are a god," he spat.

"Isn't that what we are though? Isn't it? Gods! We are gods! The fourteen dark gods from Hell—that's what they call us! And you—it's you who can't see correctly! You've disillusioned yourself to believe that you are a monster… exactly what they want you to think! I used to think you were different—smarter, stronger. But now I see….. You are just as pathetic as the rest of them—just as pathetic as the rest of the humans. You're no better than they are." The red-eyed man sneered before spitting on the carpet, "You weren't worth my time." He bowed and stalked from the room stiff-backed.

The stranger never again returned to the stone sanctuary; it was not until years later that the boy would set eyes on the half-blood god again, and by that time he would have grown accustomed to the blood-thirsty smile on his face.

"_Why?"_

_he screams_

"_Why did you let her near me? Why did you give me something to hope for?" _

_He wants to hear an answer, _

_to find someone to blame but as always there is no one_

_No one to answer him_

_No one to hear him_

_No one to pity him_

_He is alone._

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**Beta/Co-Writer/Grammar Nazi/Researcher's Note: Review it. **

**Yes, I am a Jedi and no, I do not need eye contact to use my skills. Why, you ask? I'm a Mary Sue.  
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—**IGC t DM+ and Carni**


	2. Why Does the Apple Fall?

**Author's note: Sorry for confusing chapters—alas, they are my past time. Thanks to my grammar nazi/beta who has once again saved the day, and thanks to reviewers who rock my socks off. **

**Beta/Co-writer's Note: Um. So. If any of you have done any medical research, you'll realize that that doctor later in the chapter has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. He's actually quite a good doctor, but no one in Light's world is particularly gifted when it comes to our definition of modern psychology. Please forgive him.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own The Darkangel Trilogy or Death Note. If I did, all this fan-fiction would be dedicated to myself and I would be rich rich rich. All start-of-chapter quotes are from said trilogy.**

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Why Does the Apple Fall?

"_I shall tell you the tale of the Maiden-Eater," she told him, and began._

He was always an odd child, something quietly tolerated and steadfastly ignored by the small community, but they all felt that, in one way or another, the Yagami boy was different.

Some blamed it on the child's genius—on the mind evident from before the boy was too small to walk, which kept him far ahead of other children. Before he could properly toddle, his small, pudgy fingers would trace objects within a room, arranging them in whatever manner suited him best. Before he began his schooling, his vocabulary expanded to the point that even the learned adults had trouble following him, and he actually began forcing himself to tamp down on the sophisticated, confounding elegance of his words. An extraordinary child, they proclaimed with glee. A child to be proud of.

And for some that was enough.

But most, the honest ones, contented themselves with the simple belief that Light Yagami was not entirely human—that even while he lived, ate, and slept among them, he was more distant than the stars who slept quietly in heaven, a silent observer of their own lives, and nothing more.

They had no evidence to support this conclusion. They had no facts; their silent accusation was nothing but an unspoken truth that was passed from a line of ears and thoughts to each of them. When they felt Light's eyes on their backs, they would stiffen and shudder, and, turning slowly, they would find him standing behind them, a small, comprehensive frown on his rounded face. It was in those moments that the town's people knew in their hearts that the child had never been one of them, and that like the stars, he would never be close enough for them to touch… no matter how brilliantly he burned.

And for that, they were grateful.

_I do not know much of Light Yagami's childhood_

_I never pretended that I did_

_But knowing the way the world spins_

_It could not have been remarkably different from my own_

"Light? Are you listening?" asked the elderly woman gently. To the spider on the wall she looked just like any other human—black hair, dark eyes, and incredibly dull. Her lips were puckered into a slight frown as she looked at the child sitting in the front row of the room, but even to the young arachnid, the expression seemed to be missing a piece of itself; there was no disapproval, no judgment—nothing but the distant knowledge of a deed that needed to be done.

The boy she addressed opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and simply nodded once.

Still unsatisfied, the elderly woman wrapped her knuckles against the desk in the front of the room. After a brief stretch of silence that should have been disapproving, she spoke: "Could you please explain, then, exactly what you were drawing in your notebook?" There was a twinge in her eyes that showed nature kicking in, moderating her choices. For all her rights, she could say nothing that would directly harm him.

The boy stiffened; his eyes turned downward and his smudged hands moving instinctively to cover his work. Waiting patiently, the woman smiled down at him. Whether the gesture was meant to be reassuring or intimidating—she was walking a thin line, her instincts screamed, although she could not hear—the expression didn't have its intended effect, for when the boy finally removed his hand, he seemed to be no longer interested in hiding the black-and-white markings.

The other children tittered nervously; after all, were they supposed to draw in their notebooks? Why had Light done it, then? They had not been told to—they were supposed to keep their notebooks neat.

High-pitched giggling, as usual, the eight-legged creature noticed in annoyance, moving to escape the laughter that followed the young boy everywhere.

"Oh, Light, this is a lovely picture of…." The teacher trailed off, looking blankly at whatever was on the page. The boy did not turn his head from the window, focused as he was on one particular piece of rubble perched on the sill. She continued to stare at the coal scratchings in confusion, her brow wrinkled. The soft giggles died down, replaced by small, unsettled murmurs. Each of their small, dark heads whipped around to the other, all the while keeping their eyes on the one still child.

Finally defeated, the teacher looked down at Light slowly and asked the inevitable, "What is it exactly, Light?" She set the notebook face-up on the table, looking once more at the picture portrayed. The boy looked up slowly, his brown eyes wary; his fingers tapped nervously under his desk as he evaluated the situation.

He answered softly, carefully, judging every word he spoke. "Judah, the darkangel." He traced the outline of the drawing with a fingertip and his eyes glazed over as he spoke. The spider noticed, with its multiple eyes, how far away the child looked from the rest of the room—how out of place he seemed among the other humans.

"A dark angel? That's hardly…." And the flicker sets in; the spider does not know what it is, but it is there and his hairs prickle as something in his body mutters '_not natural_'. "Are you feeling well, Light?" The woman blinked slowly and again her dark brow furrowed—Light, as he was called, frowned, but did not reply. The teacher, tapping her feet impatiently, opted to answer for him.

"Well, since this brings us to the topic anyway…. Light, would you like to share what you know about dark angels?" The teacher stepped away from the boy's roughly-carved wooden desk and backed towards the front of the room, where a single green board stood. Once again, the boy did not speak. He instead stood, followed her path towards the front of the classroom, and turned towards the confused faces.

Never eager, never pleased; when Light Yagami stood before them, no one remembered what to think anymore.

As usual for the classroom and the teacher, the boy was incomprehensible in his silence and his dull gazes. What they did not see, and the spider did, was the web of thought lurking behind the boy's eyes—eyes that were never tainted with the binding calls of the genes.

"Darkangels are inhuman monsters who suck the souls and blood of young maidens and are, essentially, the cause of evil in today's society." Once again, his small, pale fingers slowly traced the dark face of Judah, encompassed by twelve black wings, making the figure seem thin and fragilely pale in comparison.

"Light, thank you, dear. You can sit down, now."

The boy slumped down in his seat and once more began to trace the darkangel. The teacher, oblivious to his lack of attention, went on to preach about the controversial subject.

"Light is right; dark angels are great winged creatures who live high in the mountains to the north. Every year they come down to spread chaos upon the world. They are very bad, very nasty creatures who aren't kind to small children." The teacher smiled, noticing a small hand raised in the air. She pointed to it "Sakura? You have anything to say?"

"My daddy says dark angels aren't real. He says they're silly." Sakura blushed and lowered her hand, ignoring the ever-watchful presence of the boy sitting just behind her with his eyes still tracing the contours of his drawing, but his ears listening to every word.

Another hand shot up, waving about wildly. The teacher pointed to it, saying, "Go ahead, Toru."

"That's not true! My mommy saw a dark angel! She was walking home one day when all of the sudden a flying man came by. She said that she's felt funny ever since!" The classroom exploded into noise as each student made sure his or her opinion was heard. Theories flew across the small room like paper air planes in the midst of a thunderstorm.

Dark angels came from the heavens and had wings of stars.

Dark angels came from the earth, like moles, causing their skin to be pale as bone.

Dark angels were, in truth, the dead risen from their graves to spread poison and sickness among the living.

The spider was perhaps the only being in the room to notice when six-year-old Light Yagami's head lifted and his note book closed softly. The boy stood, examined the excited mass, then left the room, closing the door quietly.

_The idea of origin was a lie_

_A lie those people desperately wanted to hear_

_because to hear that someone had not set darkangels upon them_

_The knowledge would have been unbearable_

"What is evil?" asked Light Yagami at dinner on a seemingly insignificant night. He tapped his fingers against the table as he awaited an answer. His family blinked, looking at each other worriedly.

"Light, why do you want to know about evil?" asked his fretting mother, whose brown eyes had long since been stamped with wrinkles. Beside her sat his father, who had, after working several years in the center of town, moved outside to take up a farm.

"Everyone talks about it. All the other children talk about it—their parents, and the people in town, too. And yet, no one ever says what it is. No one _defines_ it and no one seems to be able to define it. I would like to hear your opinion on the subject." Light sighed and leaned back in his chair, looking at his chop-sticks dolefully while he granted his parents the chance to exchange nervous expressions before answering him.

"Remember your neighbor—Takeshi?" Light's father stroked his mustache in concentration, clearly picking out the 'right words' words to explain this in terms his strange son would understand.

"Yes. He was killed. A tree hit him?" the boy mused, remembering the teenaged neighbor who had not come home at the end of a windy day. His family had grieved for the entire night—was that considered evil? The loss of life?

"Well, that's your answer, Light. That's what evil is."

"So then, darkangels create trees to fall on people? Or do they cause the trees to fall? Do they cause death? Is that why they are evil?"

"Dark angels? Who's been talking to you about dark angels?" demanded his father as he coughed out a half-chewed piece of bread. Light's mouth closed and he once more examined the wood grains on the table.

"No one has—I just wondered…."

"Light, are you feeling well?"

Light's mimicry-of-chocolate eyes lifted from the table towards his father, and all at once Soichiro felt that inhuman gaze pierce his soul with the confirmation that this was not his son seated across from him.

"Yes, Father. I am feeling perfectly fine."

_The strange thing about humans was not their ignorance_

_or their intolerance for differences_

_It was the way they could not seem to see consequences of their actions_

_The Third Law of old no longer exists in the human world_

_in the human mind_

"Hmmmmmm. I hesitate to make a determination. I haven't seen a case like this since… ever." The middle-aged man stroked his salt-and-pepper beard thoughtfully, his dark, crow's-footed eyes shining brightly. Before him sat a small, rather gloomy Light Yagami and next to the boy stood his father, who had paced the floor for the past half hour in anxious anticipation of the doctor's diagnosis.

"I am still not quite sure what he has—" the man trailed off, twirling a finger in his beard, "—perhaps some variation of… what was it… the medical disorder found books from recent archaeological digs? Anti-social personality disorder? Yes… that would explain much… but it definitely would need to be coupled with… ah, malignant narcissism and Ausperger's Syndrome. I've searched records—only a few cases like this have been recorded, and each doctor went to the old books." The man's eyes shone with excitement. "Personality dysfunctions aside… has he always been this pale?"

"Yes—no matter how much time he spends outside, he just never...." The two men talked loudly, unaware of the child's constant attention and the brown eyes that flicked from speaker to speaker, taking in unseen details. The doctor nodded slowly, surveying the boy who now looked at his shoes with distaste, counting the minutes in the clock's progress as each one brought him closer to departure. He wondered vaguely if he might be able to reconstruct some form of the time device—they were rare and expensive, so being able to create them might come in handy. He would need to dissect one first, though….

"I see…. And he seems unusually thin," remarked the doctor, who turned to rummage through various silver objects. He pulled out a large magnifying glass and moved it towards Light's face.

"He doesn't eat much… we can't persuade him to touch his food. He just sits and watches it. At first, we thought it was a phase, but he hasn't grown out of it." Soichiro glanced down at his quiet son, his face revealing all the worried thoughts that harassed him at night. Still, the boy said nothing and remained with his head directed firmly towards the floor.

"Light, your father says you do not talk to people. Can you tell me why?" The doctor bent down to the boy's eye level, trying to get a hold on the brown eyes that were so different from his father's.

The child lifted his head to meet the man's gaze and spoke in a soft tone, "Nobody listens. Why should I talk if they do not listen?"

"Of course people listen to you, Light—people always want to hear what you have to say. People are worried about you; they want to know what's wrong. You have to tell them what's wrong." The older man stopped talking and waited for the boy to respond. At first, the child said nothing, staring straight at the aging doctor as he juggled the hazards and benefits of his options.

"You do not want to hear the answer. No one wants to hear the answer." The child's face became stony beneath the doctor's inquiring gaze; his eyes hardened, guarding his secrets behind their gleaming wall with a potency that far surpassed any normal child's abilities.

"Light Yagami, you must realize that you can be cured. This disease of yours—surely it is not so unique. But you must be able to communicate with those surrounding you. People want to help you, Light. They want to see you become… happy." The doctor held the child within his gaze, imploring him to respond to his words, but Light, unreadable as ever, kept his expression blank and unresponsive. The doctor may well have conversed with a dead goat.

"Don't be upset. He doesn't talk to us, either," muttered his father, seemingly embarrassed by his son's bizarre behavior.

Light once more tilted his head downward to stare at the lacing on his boots, counting the strings with familiarity. Had he looked upward he might have been aware of the doctor's helpless glance as he desperately sought the cure to a disease that wasn't there.

How can you solve a problem that never existed?

_Light Yagami as a child was _

_in other words _

_a complete and utter façade_

_A fabrication_

_a masque placed upon the child I knew so fully_

_No one dared to seek the difference_

_Quite ironic, really._

People feared him—abhorred him—and as time went on, the strain upon the insignificant society was too much for any one man to bear. The boy seemed less and less like others as the years passed; where before, his prodigious method of existence was declared as a phase, it became considered a flaw, something not quite right. His eyes were too narrow, his hands were too thin; his skin was far too pale. The seven-year-old child was the closest thing they would ever get to an anomaly, an oddity, in their symmetrical lives.

Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for them, the boy was quickly taken off their hands by something far more sinister—a creature that, to his peers, only existed in legends and other such folk lore. They would only have to deal with the child for seven years, eleven months, and approximately twenty eight days.

Regardless of what the individuals considered, whether this was a blessing or a curse will never be known, for if there were one thing that Light Yagami had mastered in his life, it was living in a world of gray. He was neither one thing nor another. In a black and white world, he was perhaps the only contradiction that existed—the only variable stubbornly refusing to blend into another shade.

If this event had never occurred, Light Yagami may never have grown into the monster he became as his life progressed. He may never have left that small town he grew up in and instead moved to the outskirts of the community, retreating into himself and barely emerging to see the light of day. He would not have committed many horrific deeds, had the fates woven him a different tapestry.

But as it is, he did not take that path; he instead walked down the one less traveled, and for him it made all the difference.

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**Author's note:**

**R is for reviewing **

**E is for the eccentric authoress begging for reviews**

**V is for V because V for Vendetta is awesome and all who oppose are shamed**

**I is for ice cream because it tastes good**

**E is for exciting poems meant to waste your time**

**W is for waste of time as in that's what this poem was**

**Read the poem and review, folks.**


	3. Blossom in the Dust

**Carni's Note: Thank you readers, reviewers, and the ultra beta/co-writer, without whom this would no doubt be a really crappy fic that no one would want to read because it would be so lame. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own The Darkangel Trilogy or Death Note. I wish I did, because not only would I be rich—I'd own half the world's muses, which would be completely awesome. Some chapter titles may be based roughly off of poem lines; don't own whatever those come from, either.**

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Blossom in the Dust

"_Yes, I have been waiting for you," she cried out boldly, and could barely hear the words herself._

The day L found the seven-year-old human Light Yagami was not particularly eventful. There was no apocalyptic storm in which hail the size of pomegranates poured from the sky or the streets flooded with a downpour of unstoppable rain, but the day wasn't unusually nice, either. Just a typical day in the remains of Japan.

He had not been looking for anything in particular, as no one ever is when they stumble across the greatest of discoveries. The wingéd dæmon had not even been flying, but had instead been crouched on a large steel remnant of what might have been a tall skyscraper and was now only a bent, rusted chunk of metal. His great black wings stretched from his back, each feather not releasing the slightest sheen in the winter sunlight, and his lengthy toes stretched out from under the hem of his frayed pants, completely oblivious to the cold air around them. Below him stretched a great expanse of empty grasslands, composed of the long green stalks that had long since sprouted from the ashes of a lost civilization.

He eyed the horizon with a dull expression; L was not even certain about which part of Japan he was in—where once, he would have been able to tell Osaka from Tokyo as easily as a raven from a dove, he could no longer locate the slightest difference between the spanning rows of decrepit, discolored steel ruins.

Slowly, he took out a hard-backed book, dusty and nearly illegible with age. He flipped the yellowed pages between thumb and forefinger with an expertise born only of experience. It was only because of his clear lack of attention that the child managed to make his way over to the icarus without being noticed.

"You are a darkangel." The statement came from a pale, thin boy whose features were sharp and jaded.

L lowered his book, staring down at the human child with interest, noting the wisps of shadows flowing off his skin. Rather than bothering to respond to the small boy, he raised his book once again, pretending to look through the pages.

"If you are looking for maidens to eat, prepare to be disappointed. No one travels this far west unless they are already dying." The boy gave a thin smile.

L felt himself unnerved by those narrow brown eyes, which were far too old for that small face. "Then I suppose you must be dying, as you are the only human I have seen all day," stated L without lowering his book.

The boy blinked once at the darkangel, his expression becoming dubious as L continued to read. "Yes, I am dying, just like everyone else," said the child slowly, with careful precision.

Finally, feeling that his curiosity was sufficiently piqued, the darkangel lowered the book held between his knobbed hands. "Are you going to run, little boy?" L lifted one free thumb to his lips, biting down as his owl-like eyes surveyed the child below him. Dressed in a coarse green tunic and loose leggings, the boy looked like a starving child in second-hand clothing. It was almost humorous to the wingéd dæmon, who had seen more than his fair share of malnourished children.

"No, you have no business here. You will leave, eventually bored by the scenery and by that book you are holding. Seeing as I have come all this way, I might as well wait until you leave for your dark castle, then do what I intended and return home myself." The intriguing child turned his back to L and sat down, taking a paper pad from under his loose tunic. L leaned over from his perch to glimpse a blank page and a hand rapidly creating lines out of charcoal.

Of course, the boy was right; L would have left eventually, bored indeed by the changeless scenery that the elderly found so amusing, bored by the faded print in his hands. The child had forgotten one thing, though: Himself. For whatever reason, he had automatically assumed that L would ignore him out of some divine sense of entitlement and not even figure him into the equation. That was where the human had gone so woefully wrong.

"You clearly base this theory on your knowledge of human nature, and as I am not human, the statement does not apply to me. How can you possibly think your ideas and observations will pertain to a creature you know nothing about?" L watched as the boy's hand stalled and his head turned. His eyes brown eyes narrowed. L repressed a chuckle at the child's sudden bout of ill humor.

The child, seeming defeated, dusted off his clothing and once more turned to glare at the darkangel with eyes that spoke of murder. The book of drawings closed as suddenly as it had been opened, once more being shoved into the ill-fitting fabric. Stiffly, the boy rose… all the while looking at the icarus. Finally, he spoke, "Ignorance is not something I choose to possess; it is something passed down through my family. I do not like it when people so bluntly state that I hold it in my hands."

Arrogant.

That was the word that flashed across L's mind as the boy pivoted towards the east and began to walk at a faster pace than needed. Naïve was a word that followed close behind, and yet L found himself staring at the human, his wide, color-less eyes trailing after him even as he disappeared from view.

It was on that day L remembered his last apprentice and decided it was high time he found a new one.

_It is hard to escape the death of man kind_

_The remains of its peak_

_of its golden age_

_The pieces are strewn everywhere_

_One only has to look for them_

Light did not speak of that incident when he returned to his house. Light carefully avoided all the newly planted crops out of habit; he had no wish to step on his only convenient source of food. That path, of course, led him straight towards the very person he had been trying to avoid.

He simply nodded when he saw his father approaching with a worried expression, with the fret in his old man's eyes highlighted by the wrinkles and lines that come with age. "Light, where've you been? You've been gone all day; no one has seen you! What if you had died, Light? What if something had happened to you?" came the panicked words of the man he had always considered Father, a loose fact stated only at need and sounding far darker than was intended.

"I was walking, Father. Is that so wicked? Have I been missed? The fields are sown, the crops watered. My work was done, so I left." At seven years old, Light had yet to learn the importance of tact among humans.

"Walking? What happened to school? What happened to the education that you wanted—that we wanted?" Soichiro often released his frustration at his son through half-shouted questions intended to cause the boy to fall to his knees like any normal child and beg for forgiveness. "You have a gift, Light, so don't waste it by disappearing into the wilderness."

"You cannot send me back there, Soichiro. I will not go back there to be stared at—to be laughed at! They laugh at me, Father. Did you know that? Did you think that I cannot hear them when they speak of me? Do you think that I cannot hear you—hear you talking with the village people?

"They say I am sick—diseased." Light briefly shook his head, then made to move past his father into the house, but the elder man stopped him roughly before he could disappear from view as always.

"Light, you aren't exempt from the human race, as you may think. You _are _ill—you always have been. Have you seen the other children? Don't lie and say that you can't tell the difference. Have you seen your sister? That's what it means to be healthy, and you aren't healthy." Soichiro shifted close and held his son still with two great, calloused hands, looming so darkly against the child's pale complexion. Both stood waiting for the other to speak, and the quietness consumed the words before they could be overheard by others.

"I never said I was exempt from the human race, Father. All my life you have told me I am sick and dying, that my skin is too wan, my arms are too thin, my mannerism are too reserved. And yet, with each passing day I feel no closer to death; instead, the fear rises within the people surrounding me. There is nothing I can do to stop it." Son and father looked at each other once more. Light noticed the all-too-familiar glaze clouding his father's eyes, but continued none the less. "Do you think I can go a day without looking in that mirror you so conveniently placed in my room and not see what you have described—that I do not curse myself every second of every day that I was not born like my precious sister Sayu, who can barely walk?" A stretched pause, "Who can barely walk, and yet I envy her…."

His father's grip finally loosened. Light darted past the older man, up the creaky steps and into the wooden house; movement made each plank creak as if it might fall apart in one more step. It was not until he reached the top stair that he called back to his father in an apathetic, dry tone, "I shall return when dinner starts, Father."

And with that, he was gone once more from his family's life, moving up towards the poorly lit attic where he could gaze upon the horizon.

_The thing I hate most about humans is talking to them_

_Now to be fair _

_there were a few_

_a very few_

_who were not horrible conversationalists_

_But the rest of them are pathetic and it is not even worth your time conversing_

_All the same responses and questions_

_Very dull_

_if you ask me_

A very curious aspect of the icari was their determination. When they believed something needed to be done, it would be done. It was almost admirable, to those who did not know better, to the poor fools who could not see past both parties' blind charades. Of course, like most aspects of the darkangels, their doggedness was sorely misunderstood by the public—painted in an all-too-incorrect light so that when seen in its original state, the viewer could be quite surprised by the change.

Those who truly saw the darkangels would feel the ominous chant radiating from the icari's minds:_'Get it done, get it done, get it done'._

But like the rest of the world, the icari themselves hardly realized they had such one-track minds, that their thoughts were driving them down a narrow path at a sprinting pace. They were completely oblivious to the blinders obscuring their clear-eyed vision.

So when L decided, in his single-minded way, that it was perfectly within his rights to steal the child… he could find no reason not to. After observing him for a few days, it was obvious that his parents were not fond of him, and in that dislike did not realize exactly what they were dealing with.

Scrawny, yes, remarkably so, but still—the simple brilliance he exuded, even as a human, was unmistakable and compensated for any other faults. The bitterness could not be helped after being trapped with humans for so long; such a situation would affect anyone's personality, and L had a feeling that the boy would not have been particularly agreeable even without his time spent in that house.

Apprentice.

The word seemed ominous in his well-seasoned mind. This child, Light Yagami, would be his second apprentice. After the first one had failed so blatantly, he was not entirely certain he wished to take on a new one; that had been fifty years ago and he still felt the reverberations of his hasty actions. L was a rash creature, he did not deny it, but with his mistakes glaring at him through the dark, he had learned to pay homage to caution on the occasion. The vampyre still would not question his decision too thoroughly—after all, how rebellious could one small human be? If worst came to worst, he could always kill him—what was one more dead body to the earth who bore so many?

But what L would not admit to himself was the need that comes with all vampyres and their goals, no matter how aloof or ambitious: The need to fulfill that self-set standard. Whether it was a good decision or not, Light Yagami's fate had been decided the moment he met the darkangel's gaze.

_Apathy is a word not often described in human terms_

_and yet_

_in some ways_

_it is the best term that describes them_

_They are apathetic to the rest of the world_

_for contentment is a poison that slowly eats away at the people_

_I_

_for one _

_had nothing to do with it_

"I don't remember anything from the night I was… spirited away. You must understand, of course—before that night, my life had been one routine after another. I wasn't prepared for such… shock, I suppose, is the word you would use."

The icarus' tone was not a familiar one; it was not the normal commanding authority to which she was accustomed, but a vocal expression of sorrowful frustration. His thin face seemed weary, with the misery etched into that fair visage and his eyes showing the years that his youthful appearance had misplaced with his vigor.

"Nothing?" she questioned almost silently, but with his acute hearing the darkangel managed to hear and smirked slightly before resuming his usual indifferent expression.

"That's a lie. I do remember a few flashes of image—stars winking out of the sky, the sudden chill in the air, and night-dark feathers that sucked light from the room like miniature black holes.

"God, it was so dark. I could not see; I could not think. I was so cold." He stopped speaking, glassy eyes focused on the events he did not want to remember. His gloved hands clenched into dark fists and the black fabric wrinkled with tension.

"But you didn't want to remember, did you?" answered the dark haired woman for him, her thoughts once more picking up on what the vampyre preferred to leave silent and unsaid.

It was a talent she would later be both thankful for and wary of, but for now she considered it to be nothing.

_Sometimes I find my memory is not quite what it used to be_

_There are moments where I am not sure why I am in one place _

_and not in another_

_Or times when I question where I stand on my own viewpoints_

_It is not a pleasant feeling._

Darkness, the reek of darkness, invaded his room, smelling faintly of rust and withering flowers. He had always felt the shadows, even when the light no longer illuminated their hiding places, and he had always been able to smell their breath upon his face, so he almost did not turn when a gust of wind rushed past him, carrying with it the cold smell of death.

He felt his own breathing fall short. He pretended he didn't see them; he pretended he didn't hear them; he pretended he didn't know them as well as he knew himself, but they had always been there on the fringes of life, whispering silently in the dark of the night.

The voice that whispered to him was not one of the ones, a refraction of his own voice, that he knew so well—it was a new voice, but one he had heard before. Out of context, he could not place it.

"Yagami-kun," it whispered in a calculated tone, as if it had already guessed his answer.

But of course, Light did not answer. He did not want to answer. This was not his father, this was not his sister, and this was not some man to be shoved aside with an odd look and a cold word. He could feel the inhuman edge in the voice. This was no man that he could deal with.

The creature with the voice filled with darkness did not wait for a response. The stranger's hands were filled with icy fragments, cutting through Light's clothing to his bare skin as they grabbed at him, clawing him closer, towards the darkness.

Before he could protest, before he could think, a single, strangling strip of cloth was tied loosely around his eyes, partially obscuring his vision. He did not bother to scream, so his captor did not bother to gag him and instead hoisted him immediately into the air and through his open window—the window he clearly recalled closing before he had gone to bed.

He felt warmth flee from his chest as the cold arms tightened around him; he briefly considered struggling, but placed the thought aside. Nothing would be accomplished. The icy chill had slowly begun to seep through his skin, making it hard to move—hard to think—but he knew if he struggled, he would fall to his death. His window was too high a fall to survive—they had not dropped back down to the ground and yet they moved forward.

"Darkangel-san," stated Light Yagami in absolute sureness, watching through a gap in the cloth covering as his fate was sealed in two pale, inhuman hands and feeling the wind increase speed and the air grow thinner. He could not process the dæmon's response to his words.

Cold. It was so cold.

The last thought that managed to pass through his muddled head before the oxygen-sparse air took its toll on his conscious was that someone other than himself might have found the situation incredibly ironic.

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**Carni's Note: I feel melodramatic; it's so hard not being sarcastic. It makes me feel sad inside -_-". Ah well, that's the end of chapter two. Have fun and review. **

**If you don't, I may have to make a terrible Chuck Norris joke. And no one wants to hear one of those. **

**Scourge's Note: I can recite them in alphabetical order. All of them.  
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	4. Caricature

**Carnie's note: I love disclaimers. They're so… constant. And reviewers are nice too, not to mention the ultra-beta-co-writer, who puts me in my place when melodrama overflows into a pool of liquid suffering and despair…. I'll stop now. **

**Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT A DISCLAIMER.**

**The real disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN DEATH NOTE OR DARKANGEL.**

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Caricature

"_And you know what the icari does with their brides, do you, girl?"_

"Childhood?" repeated the darkangel slowly, his brow furrowing as he slowly rolled the word between his mind's fingers. His fair hair, once sliced short and clean in a rather toadstool-like cut, had grown long and gnarled—the thin strands of cinnamon had been pulled back into a wispy braid, trailing down his back as he bent over various pieces of medical paraphernalia the human couldn't have identified even if she wished.

"Or have you simply existed since the dawn of time?"

As always, he continued to work as he considered her statements, making no physical effort to show he had heard.

The silence ended as he stated slowly, "No." She tilted her head towards him as his voice ceased and he continued to labor. "I'm not that old, though I age greatly with each passing year. The weariness one gains is unimaginable; being immortal is a far cry from being forever youthful, which is often the interpretation of my current state." His black-gloved hands paused over a silver instrument that gleamed faintly in the candles' soft glow. "My childhood ended the day I was born. I was always aware of people… staring at me. I was an oddity in a world where differences cast one into doubt, into this category of… others. Something not welcome. I'm sure my family was rather relieved when I left." He turned around with the metallic object in his lap, facing her with his ever-grim expression.

"Where did you go? Did you come here?" she asked, looking up towards the high-vaulted ceiling, glancing over the charcoal drawings that seemed to line every wall, each black-lined image showing another portion of the darkangel's thoughts, each one another window into his closed mind.

"No. It was a long time before I came here. To say I left home is a lie. I didn't 'leave', because that implies I had a choice. It wouldn't have been long until I would have; it was very difficult for me to live there, as you can no doubt imagine." He paused, then turned to meet her eyes. "I was taken by the darkangel you know as Judah. At that time, I referred to him as Ryuzaki."

_Good and Evil_

_To tell the truth _

_there is little difference between the two_

_There are certainly acts of murder and violence_

_acts of charity and justice_

_but it is the shades of gray that we seem to grow blind to_

_It is the shades where the line between the pair grows blurred_

_until old fools such as I _

_can no longer tell the difference. _

Light Yagami awoke to the faint glimmer of candle-light, as his eyes blinked away the dark spots and his mind sought consciousness. The cold, immobilizing sting in his head receded to his finger-tips and finally out of his body altogether, replaced by a numb chill. His eyes began to see objects in the dimly lit cavern—tall, gothic archways carved in stone, leering and looming in their shadows; thin candelabras lined the walls, dripping pale wax onto the granite floor. On the walls hung faded portraits of men and women, dimensionless figures surrounded by golden halos of light and draped in colorful robes that he couldn't place.

Without realizing it, he found himself standing in front of the portrait of a man with blood dripping down his face. Woven around his forehead was a crown of thorns, seeping blood from the jagged edges that pierced his tanned skin. Light's pale fingers reached slowly to trace the man's strangely serene expression before stopping. Slowly, he turned, and for the second time met the darkangel's gaze.

Unnerving and demanding, the cold eyes bored through his skull with a will that expected nothing short of absolute obedience. It was unquestionable that he should offer anything less, the eyes told him. Half of his being wished to hurl itself to the ground and beg for mercy, but the other half, being the more practical one, took over and forced the boy to hold his ground. He would not lose his pride to a creature that wasn't even human.

The darkangel seemed to be waiting for Light to ask something, or to say something, but Light Yagami had long ago learned that it is best to remain silent and observe before one strikes. At seven years old, Light knew how to tie his tongue to his teeth tighter than any human adult.

Seemingly annoyed, the icarus answered the unasked question with a tone of irate amusement. "'What am I?' I am an Icarus, a member of the proud race of Darkangels, black gods from the deepest pits of hell come to enact divine judgment on the human race; a monstrous beast who steals the souls of maidens and drinks their blood as a toast to mortality. As for 'Who am I?'…. The world calls me Judah, but to those few who know me I am known as L."

Once again, the vampyre stopped, waiting for a response of any kind. The human, though, remained cold and silent, his eyes glittering with the power of gained knowledge, as it was stored away to be employed, no doubt, against the darkangel when his guard slipped away.

Finally, Light spoke. With clear hesitation, he repeated the syllable presented to him. "L?" It was a name he had not heard before—a single letter, something rather uncommon in his own language. Clearly, it meant that the darkangel was a foreigner. His accent would have marked him as a visitor even without the name; had he been seen in the human's village, even without the wings, he would have been feared and shunned.

That's not to say there had never been travelers within his village. Men and women who wandered the land every now and then stopped through each town along the way, but they had never traveled far. Their accents were never too strong, their features were never too different, and their mannerisms and customs were a near match. Light had been more disliked than the rare nomadic passers-by.

Analyzing the vampyre once more, he realized he had never seen any human with such a pale visage; the darkangel's bones seemed to almost tear through his nearly translucent skin, visible even through the baggy tunic and trousers; his eyes seemed larger than any human's he had seen—more owl-like, wide and omniscient; and his nose was slightly longer at the bridge, hardly visible against his snow white features. Perhaps strangest of all was the icarus' hair, which spiked out in all conceivable directions, each silver strand standing on end as if it were entwined with wire, melding with snow-white highlights.

"You may call me Ryuuzaki, because frankly, your mispronunciation of my name will drive me mad. We cannot have that, can we?" The darkangel seemed to be amused by whatever thought had struck him; or, at least, Light thought he was amused. It was hard to tell with this creature that hid his emotions so well behind a mask of indifference. Interesting, that the creature would employ the use of a tool Light had never encountered in anyone other than himself—every human he had ever met left their thoughts hanging in the air for all to view. It was only Light who knew the meaning of what it meant to hide oneself.

"You are certainly not a muscle man, but then again, you are not needed for heavy lifting," continued the vampyre with disdain, his thin hand reaching over to Light's short tunic sleeve. The boy drew back from the icy chill that exuded from those hands, but the darkangel paid no heed. The Icarus' eyes narrowed and he clicked his tongue in what Light believed to be annoyance.

"Still, you should probably attempt to build muscle. Your arms look like candlesticks! What do they feed you children these days?" The darkangel breathed out, shaking his head slightly and loosening his hold on Light's clothing, allowing the boy to totter back from the vampyre. Had the vampyre been less imposing, Light might have voiced the hypocrisy of the situation, and mocked how like skin and bones the darkangel himself appeared to be.

The silence stretched between the two of them until finally the darkangel, still exasperated, broke it, "Ah, well, we have our work cut out for us."

_Diversity among humans is laughable_

_They all look the same_

_Like rabbits_

_It is bothersome to tell them apart_

_Of course _

_some people have tried to argue the same for us_

_But no one actually believes them_

"Disgusting, are they not?" The darkangel's whisper fell close to Light's ear, tone full of a bitter irony that the child was too young to place. "They were once very beautiful, all… with flowing locks of hair and luminescent eyes. Now look at them."

They appeared as if they had once been women, exactly as the darkangel had so aptly described. Their figures had long since vanished, leaving twig-like bones and torsos that seemed to disappear within the thin rags they wore. Each wraith-like creature rocked back and forth, issuing moans and dry sobs, and through their thin lips, Light's gaze could just barely trace the outline of their teeth.

What disturbed him the most was not the stiff, straight hair or emaciated emptiness of form, but the dark holes where their eyes should have been. Each empty socket seemed as if it were pleading to him for something—release, respite, eternal sleep.

"At first, I thought it was the weather, but then I realized that maybe it is merely the fact that they have no souls or blood in their bodies, and have subsequently lost their minds."

The icarus' words sounded far away, for the boy was lost in those dark sockets as they wept invisible tears, all visible expression of sorrow lost in the absence of liquid.

Walking corpses, things that should have been buried beneath the earth—they were _disgusting_.

He vaguely remembered a time when he had scoffed at the belief of such atrocities and snickered at the mere idea of the beings the nomads had whispered of. Beautiful women, they said, taken from their homes and never seen again—stolen as brides for the vampyres, the wingéd dæmons who plagued the world. He had hardly believed the tales, except, perhaps, in wistful fantasy; if he had horrified his neighbors by drawing a simple picture of a darkangel, there was no word severe enough to describe their reactions to the sickly brides.

A horribly inaccurate picture of a darkangel, he now saw.

The Judah he had sketched had been much taller, perhaps stretching to seven feet. His arms, while being unnaturally long, hadn't been as thin as the real darkangel's, and his hair had been much more tamed in charcoal. To see reality was like being forced to look in an honest mirror and see just how ignorant he truly was.

Ignorance.

A day prior and he would have considered the word laughable when directed at himself. He was not ignorant of the suffering that lay around him, or so he had thought. It was only then, as he stared into the dark abyss of the wraiths' skulls through the passage of their empty eyes, that he truly saw himself for what he was: A small child, too young to know any better, in the hands of a creature who would abandon him to a fate worse than death.

Truth was a mirror, broken into fragments, with each piece portraying a different angle; every shard painted a different reflection, but an equal measure of reality. Distortion of this reality was the simple matter of rearranging the pieces, but to see the full picture was to mend the mirror, to pull the fractions back together, to complete the puzzle—an impossible task, intended only for hesitant gawking.

All his life, Light had lacked the pieces to see past his own fragmented reality, instead choosing to believe that the one shard he held contained all the knowledge he needed to know. It was only now, away from everything he had believed real, that he discovered the sea of jagged glass beneath his bare feet.

"What do you want from me?" Light said, his eyes skirting back to the pale darkangel, whose expression had changed to something more easily read, something he himself had often seen while peering at his own reflection.

"You are rather quick to the point, Light-kun. Perhaps you do have your uses. As you can see, my wives are less than apt to movement in their current… state… for lack of better terms. Also, a few of them seem to have… _run off_. Eleven, although I may be mistaken—they do tend to blur together. I need you to deal with it, as I am occupied." Judah, L, Ryuzaki chuckled under his breath coldly. There was no sympathy in that voice, no inkling of pity for Light to cling to in his unfamiliar surroundings.

The wraiths moaned in unison, pitching every wail in a different piercing key. Light clapped his hands against his ears and they remained there, even after the cursed sounds stopped. The icarus, seeing Light, simply quirked one corner of his lips, then turned away from the boy and the remains of his wives.

"I do hope, Light-kun, that you are indeed as clever as you believe yourself to be."

_Lies are a gift with which many are blessed. _

_Truth is a curse that haunts us till we are dead._

_They are too entwined to allow us to ignore one for the other. _

After the third day, Light could no longer force himself to look at them.

The first day had been the worst (or so he told himself). The first instant of staring into their black eyes, watching their writhing movements as they struggled to make their way across the room, hearing their moans and unintelligible words—that was the most horrible. Before he had puzzled out exactly what to expect, it had been excruciating. The first day was hardly bearable, and so much harder than the rest (or so he told himself).

He didn't even believe they could talk; they had somehow lost the ability to speak and now only spluttered and gurgled.

One of them had turned its head towards him and had begun crawling towards him; it had been at that moment that Light had realized the door was locked. The door was locked.

Furiously, terrified, he had banged against the wood; he had shaken the handle and had glanced behind him at the shrieking women, eyes wide with fright. As soon as his fist had pounded against the door, the decrepit creatures had begun to scream out a sound that seared against his mind, fragmenting his thought process.

That had been the first day.

The second day had been easier, in a way; he had awoken to find himself curled against the door, facing towards the skeletal creatures. His limbs had been sore, and although they had ached, he had not moved from his position. The women had milled aimlessly on their own side of the room, glancing at him every now and then out of a vague curiosity. They had not approached him again—whether out of apprehension or disinterest, he didn't care… so long as they did not touch him.

Light's plan, at that point, had been very simple and childish: Run through the door as soon as the darkangel came to unlock it. It was pathetic, and he knew it, but there was nothing else to be done. Light had never drunk much, but the lack of water was taking its toll on his mind; his solutions were slower to arrive and lacked the painstakingly detailed wrappings that normally came with the package. Light had never _needed_ to be brilliant before, and now, when he had _needed_ his birthright, it had abandoned him.

A child, a simple child, locked away behind a single door in a room with three corpses, awaiting the judgment of the darkangel.

In his sleep, he dreamed of rushing water, and clear glass lakes that lingered just an arm's distance away… and yet never within reach.

By the third day, this day, he wondered if the icarus had simply left him to die. It seemed an odd way to operate—kidnap him simply for the purpose of abandoning him to death's clawed grasp. Illogical, but then, the darkangel wasn't human: Who said it had to follow human logistics?

The thirst would kill him before the hunger. A human could live without food for a substantial amount of time, but without water he could feel his mind slipping away, wandering from his body only to return with no memory of where it had erred.

What was the mind without the body, the body without the mind?

And yet, somehow he couldn't bring himself to care, even when his eyesight dulled and his memory fell to pieces. He found himself growing ever apathetic. If the darkangel wished him dead, so be it. What would he have done with his life instead—lived alone on the outskirts of civilization, wandering from village to village as a disgraced nomad with a foreign name? Perhaps it was better to meet an early end than to draw the tedium out.

Somewhere behind the door, the vampyre crouched, laughing away at the demise of poor, human Light Yagami, and Light was quite certain that if he had the energy, he might have been laughing as well.

_To say I lied to him would be untrue_

_More or less_

_I _

_instead _

_opted to let him believe what he wished to believe_

_Whether I was angel or d__æ__mon was entirely his choice_

_Sometimes I think he could never tell the difference_

"Welcome back, Light-kun. It would appear you are not yet deceased." The darkangel's impassive voice came to Light distantly, echoing off the lapse of conscious time.

"Dehydration?" asked Light, coughing through his dry throat, opening his eyes to search for nourishment. Seeming to sense his intent, Ryuzaki quickly set down a clear container of water on the boy's chest.

"Not enough to kill you, apparently. I am pleasantly surprised—I thought you would be dead by now. Three days is usually enough to do it for a hysterical child," said the icarus in a dead monotone, seemingly bored by the information he drawled out.

The darkangel waited for Light to finish off the water before handing him another bottle and muttering, "Be careful not to drink it all at once. I would rather you avoided vomiting on my floor."

"Why did you let me out?" asked Light bluntly.

Instead of being surprised, the darkangel seemed to have been expecting the question. "I believe I told Light-kun I need an apprentice," answered the vampyre as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He raised his hand to his mouth, biting on his thumb in a childish gesture that did not match the creature's appearance in the least.

Did such creatures normally imprison their protégés and nearly kill them?

Light was slowly realizing the monolithic separation between human thinking and this creature's process of cognition. He then began to do as any man of marginal intelligence who had brushed up against a contradiction would: Recalculate.

The spiraling figures told him it would be pointless to argue, that stabbing at the flaws and manifest lies would get him nothing, so he simply nodded.

"Good. I will not be required explain myself." The darkangel seemed thoroughly pleased with himself, and drew closer to Light. "There is little you are useful for. Light-kun is terrible with women and not built for any physical labor. In fact, I think Light-kun's redeeming feature would be his intelligence, which is the last thing I need from him."

The icarus paused, then; whether for dramatic effect or acknowledgement, the boy was far too busy guzzling his drink to determine. When Light's supply of water was depleted, the icarus continued, sounding more irate than before.

"While hunting down my escaped brides, Light-kun will accompany me to cities and distribute a very rare and exotic fruit. An extreme few are grown, so I will expect Light-kun's respect when dealing with them." The darkangel pivoted and drew out a blood-red, spherical object. It gleamed dimly in the candle-light. Without thinking, Light reached out and snatched the beckoning fruit from the darkangel to examine it more closely.

"Hmmmm. I had forgotten hunger kills humans. Very well. I have others. Eat it." The darkangel then stood swiftly, hunching his shoulders in an informal stance, and slouched away, his great black wings obscuring all but the silver-spiked tips of his hair.

And with one bite of the angel's offering, the child condemned himself to a life distanced from humanity.

* * *

**Scourge's Note: Thank you all for your support. :D**


	5. Shadow of the Sun

**Author's note: I LOVE EVERYONE! Especially those who read and review my work, and especially my beta, Scourge, who helps with the dreadful run-on sentences—doesn't help with the confusion, though. Sorry, but then again, no I'm not. **

**Scourge's Note: …I completely forgot to update this. We've had the next three chapters sitting in my documents folder for the past four months, too. Do forgive the wait. /end fail**

**Disclaimer: If I owned the Darkangel or Death Note, why would I be writing fanfiction? **

Shadow of the Sun

_The icarus was already far away, a dark blot against the stars._

The villages they visited recognized the child as something foreign; as soon as they saw him, haunted gold eyes and thin pale features betrayed him. At first, they saw him as a young traveler, immigrating from his own home out of mourning or grief, but later it would become all to obvious that the child's mind wandered farther than any amount of sorrow would have born him.

He was a child of the gods, haunted by duty and the divine knowledge. He spoke with wisdom and suffering uncanny for a child, and he often looked at them in a way that would frighten them to their very core. They believed him haunted by death.

His eyes, they said burned with something no human could touch—his tongue was sharp in its articulation and speech, and he never lost the look of someone followed. Mocking and silent, he ever reminded them of the gods they had forgotten to pray to.

It was not pity that drove them to consult the child, but a sense of foreboding that had arisen among them. The boy with the strange fruit was not something to be trifled with.

_The great cities had fallen long ago_

_leaving scattered villages spread across the land_

_each one ignorant of the others' existence, save few nomads_

_and yet the news of my apprentice still traveled_

"You see these people, Light-kun? These are the people I may never converse with; these are the people I may never approach, save in violence." The darkangel looked down upon his apprentice with an indifferent expression, though his voice sounded bitter.

Light stared on towards the villagers with a strange longing in his eyes. These people that he saw… it reminded him of home. They were simple people who hid their tanned faces beneath woolen layers, held simple hopes and dreamed simple dreams. In their yards their daughters ran freely, their skirts swishing softly against their ankles as they danced in the snow, their young, carefree faces beaming with the joy of youth—the joy Light had never known.

And he felt the same cold isolation he had always known among people, for by his side stood the vampyre with apathetic eyes.

"I do not know these people," said Light, watching as a family walked out of their home and into the village's common center, where a broken fountain stood triumphantly. And it was true—he had recognized no one since they had landed; these men were kinsmen to him, but this land was no place the soles of his feet had touched.

The darkangel watched the boy beside him impassively, his colorless eyes brooding in thought. When he spoke, his tone betrayed none of his intentions to the child; nor did his face give any inkling to his thoughts, and yet, Light could feel the faint irritation emanating from the creature.

"Perhaps, then, you would prefer to accompany me in my attempt at tracking down my lovely brides. I believe them to have run somewhere off in..." Ryuzaki's head swiveled and his arms flailed until pointing vaguely south-east… "that direction. I'm fairly sure they still inhabit Japan—I doubt they could swim to China, no matter how long I've neglected to search for them."

The darkangel then sighed, his inky feathers rustling with frustration. He looked back towards the boy with a bored expression, clearly impatient to leave. "I'll be back once I find at least one of my lovely brides. Until then, you stay here and make some use of yourself by selling apples."

"What use do darkangels have with material possessions?" Light was referring to the money he would earn by selling the fruit; the darkangel, being immortal, should by rights have had no use for such frivolous things.

"Who said I was in need of it?" The vampyre continued his sentence before Light could answer back, "I am off. Do not even consider fleeing, because I will find you—and rest assured, I will kill you."

_Threats are only effective if they have foundation_

_Empty threats are only useful if reveal your bluff _

_turns the situation to your advantage_

_I learned that the harder way_

"Where are your wives?"

The darkangel didn't turn from where he was perched, gazing out at the horizon with his dull eyes. The wingéd dæmon wondered briefly when things had changed, when she had found the courage and the desire to come seek him out and question him, rather than sit and wait until he came to her. It seemed that she could never run out of questions.

"Have you been looking for them?" His tone breeched on conversational and the dark-haired woman took this as a good sign. She continued.

"Yes." With that one word response, she finally managed to grasp the creature's attention—he rotated back towards the building, turning his view away from the dying trees and grass surrounding his domain.

"You're a fool," he said, all trace of conversation gone from his voice, his cold, dead eyes burning with anger, but whether it was directed at her or himself she could no longer say. The time had passed where she could deem the darkangel's anger to be frustration with humanity—it was more than that.

_To those who see me as a god _

_I can laugh_

_It's a ridiculous notion_

_That I _

_could possibly be divine_

The sun set in the west, illuminating the hunched child on the street corner, whose arms folded over his skinny legs in an attempt to stay warm. It was still winter, he reminded himself—the snow coats the ground, crunching as each humans attempted to hurry home before darkness fell. They ignored the small child curled against their neighbor's home; they didn't see the pile of crimson fruit resting beside him. They did not see that his golden eyes were bright with anger and indignation.

Twice now, the darkangel had imposed his rule through death—first by starvation; now it seemed he was fated to freeze to death, to become a cold, lifeless statue, clutching at a sack of scarlet fruit. Yet again the vampyre had shown his indifferent wrath by destroying him as, careless and merciless, he watched from the shadows, his crystal eyes laughing.

Light blew on his frigid fingers, searching for the elusive feeling of warmth. He knew the darkangel was watching him, that the icarus would not bother to search for his wives. After all, he clearly kept such careful mind to the last three as they wasted away within a cobwebbed room. At first, he didn't notice when his limbs lost feeling; when he realized, he knew that if someone were to strike him, it would not hurt. Though he is, seven he knew that he was the icarus' next corpse, his next lovely wraith to decorate his halls.

He could feel it, he knew it—he could see his wasted little body huddled in a corner, withering away among the walking corpses. His hands began to shake and his teeth chattered, and so he reached for an apple and took a bite, hoping that this would bring ire to the icarus and that he will have at least achieved something.

Light was pathetic. He could do nothing—he was small, he was young, he was not nearly as clever as he believed he was. The sun was setting, a star was falling—once more, Light Yagami is dying, as he had seemed to be doing quite often, in the recent days.

_Death is an illusion_

_It does not exist_

_It is a lie_

They gathered around the child in fascination. His skin looked translucent, almost as if he were made of glass; his arms and legs appeared to be made with the finest delicacy, each thin limb looking as if it had been sculpted into shape. His face rested in a somber expression far too serious for any child to wear.

They didn't know where he came from or how he got there carrying nothing but a sack of exotic fruit. Initially, they guessed that he may have travelled from a nearby village, as his clothes do not seem particularly soiled from travel, but his features are far from anything they have ever seen—he was obviously a foreigner, a wanderer travelling far from any home he might have known.

It was only when they meet his golden eyes that they knew he is not just a nomad whose ways involved aimless treks that always circulated back to a common point—he was a long way from his home, any home. At first he said nothing, contenting himself by staring at them with his large amber eyes. They did not ask questions, fearing the way he looked at them as if he could tell their entire history in one short glance. There was a power in that stare; they felt it pulling on them, commanding them to obey and to fear.

When he did speak, it is not to say thank you, or to even state his name. He looks at them and asked, "Why did you bother?"

They didn't know how to answer; they didn't know what words to say. They simply watched as the child sighed in disappointment, rolling back under the covers where he closed his eyes and returned to sleep.

He never thanked them, not once; he seemed to believe there was nothing worth thanking them for. The next morning they found only rumpled bed sheets and a single red fruit.

He didn't know that by leaving that solitary fruit, he had single handedly killed them all.

_As Light Yagami grew, he became less accustomed to humans_

_He forgot what they were truly like_

_choosing to see them instead _

_as the ideal world in which he was stolen from_

_I didn't feel the desire to tell him otherwise_

_He wouldn't have listened. _

Light couldn't help but glare as he approached the vampyre, his arms outstretched to convey that he had done his task, that the cursed apples were gone. The vampire, of course showed no reaction to this—or anything else, for that matter—as he continued to stare blankly at the ground. Whatever held his attention did so for a number of minutes before he finally looked up.

"I swore I was moving the right direction. Perhaps they the impossibly has happened—they truly have managed to swim to China and I have managed to sorely underestimate the opponent." The darkangel sighed under the weight of his shadowed wings—and ye,t despite the humorous posture, the darkangel still leaked a sense of something lethal and foreboding.

"Your apples are gone, your wives are missing—are you done here?"

The icarus looked down at the child with a wide-eyed expression that failed to express any shock or surprise. Light, in a flash of malice, found it irritating how the creature would put on a little show for him—the masquerade of 'feelings'. The darkangel didn't possess emotion.

"All gone? We shall have to return to gather some more, and then go looking in the opposite direction. Pray they haven't swum to South America… if that were possible…." Whether the darkangel doubted his logic or whether he was continuing the act for Light's benefit, the boy couldn't tell. "Well, cheer up, Light-kun—you'll get more apples to give away soon enough. I say 'give' because I originally said 'sell', and I have not noticed any money in that dirty tunic of yours."

Light thought the icarus must enjoy the charade of acting out pseudo-emotions, he seemed to find if amusing to act offended, angry—disappointed, even. Light considered himself intelligent enough to see through it; he wasn't just any human that the darkangel could shove about.

_Light's one true weakness was his ego_

_It was huge_

_Prodigiously huge_

_It was what kept him in check_

_It was what allowed me to be able to control him for so long_

_Of course, when that disappeared_

_everyone lost access to Light's twisted mind_

Misa noticed the pale boy in the marketplace. He stood alone among the crowd of hagglers, leaning casually against a wooden pillar supporting a building. Despite the easy posture that held a certain note of… _something_… that her schooling told her to identify as 'contempt', but which she could not bring herself to fully understand, it was his dark eyes, so dark brown they appeared almost black in the noon day sun, that her attention was fixated on. Misa watched as his eyes roved over the market goers, pausing on each wife haggling over prices with the vender. She found it hypnotic to gaze at him while he surveyed the scene around him as distantly as if he were a star blazing in the heavens, a silent and ever-watchful god of the night.

It surprised her when she found herself standing in front of him, staring at his thin, lanky figure and his dark, intelligent eyes. It took him a moment to notice her, as he was so absorbed in his own thoughts. Misa took this lapse of attention to scrutinize his ragged tunic and the stained burlap bag resting at his feet, but before her hand could open it, she was stopped by the boy himself.

"Do not touch my bag." His grip on her wrist was tight and unyielding—she felt herself forced to look into his eyes, which, closer, appeared much lighter in color than she had originally conceived. They looked almost golden.

"You're new here aren't you? I've never seen any one with your color of skin…." Or, Misa thought to herself, eyes that changed color as you neared.

"I have a vitamin deficiency; that is all. It is not, as you say, an entirely different color—rather, it is your color of skin with a lack of ability to darken in sunlight." He had an accent, she noted, but not one she could place instinctively. He must have come from farther away than she had previously thought.

"Fine then. I've never seen anyone who's hidden like a hermit from the sunshine. So what caused you to venture out so bravely into the light?" Misa laughed at the boy's puzzled expression; his eyes narrowed in concentration as he tried to piece together some difficult riddle. It was odd to see that look on anyone's face, even if they were foreign.

"I came because I came; my business is my own and has nothing to do with you." His sentence finished and his gaze traveled from her to the swarm of people that still milled loudly about the brightly-colored tents and shop-fronts. His left hand traveled down to the sack and gripped it as if to hoist it over his shoulder and walk away.

People didn't walk away when asked a question; people didn't stare blankly when talking to a neighbor, or even a stranger—they smiled, they laughed—and this boy… he had not once smiled, or even pretended he found her interesting at all. It was odd, it was frightening—it was intriguing.

"So where do you come from, then? Don't you love the marketplace, or the village, or the scenery?" She was rambling, attempting to regain his attention and failing miserably. Even as he looked at her, it was obvious he was not listening; his eyes were glazed and his stance had changed from relaxed to tense as she continued to speak.

He finally interrupted her in a high pitched imitation of her own voice. "Don't I love the flowers? Don't I love the beautiful people? Don't I love the way they prance around buying this, selling that, chatting about the weather?" He let out a harsh laugh, a laugh that was more a projected exhalation than an actual vocalization of glee. "As for where do I come from—well, I am not even sure of that myself. Sometimes, I think the aliens forgot where they left me to rot."

Misa didn't know what to compare him to—he was too different, too much like the shadows that infested her room at night and the dark thunderstorm crackling in the distance. She couldn't describe a force of nature because there were no words for it, just as there were no words for him.

"I didn't ask you about flowers," stated Misa softly, watching as his face seemed to transform to stone before her eyes.

"No, I suppose you did not, but then you did not ask me anything of consequence, either."

The boy sighed, hoisting the bag over his shoulder; its contents bumped haphazardly against his back. "The sun is high and I have fruit to distribute. The wingéd dæmons are waiting and I am not one to keep them."

_He didn't understand humanity anymore than I do_

_He can't help it_

_As much as he likes to believe it_

_He simply is not as human as he thinks he is_


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: So we have no intention to finish this. Its direction developed sloppily, and was ultimately lost. We'll be posting the remaining three chapters, which constitute about… one tenth of the total story. This will never be finished. We just want to get the last of what we have posted, so that it's… there… marked as complete... and not on my hard drive. And of course, for your viewing pleasure? **

**Also, these chapters haven't been edited for grammar, content, or quality. HAVE FUN.**

"So were these your victims?" she asked, the innocence in her tone almost mocking as she once more blatantly insulted the darkangel without even a hint of remorse. The icarus took it with a shake of his head, accepting the fact that these unintentional slights were in her nature.

Outside the sky was dark and laden with brilliant stars. Even as she stood, proud and sleep-deprived, a candle burning slowly in her hand, she could not help but feel as if the painted eyes were watching her. There were times when she would rather be with the icarus himself than to be left alone with his faded memories.

"No, not always. Sometimes they are, but more often then not I can't say I honestly remember a single one of them. The faces pop in and out of focus, sliding to the edges of my vision only to reach the center once again." The darkangel did not smile as he spoke, leaving his voice a dull monotone reserved for discussing the weather. "Do you see the drawing of that child in the corner?"

She did not turn her head to look, instead focusing her energy into watching the reflection of her small flame in the vampyre's golden eyes. She did not want to see another shadow of his life creeping its way across the walls, staring down at her with hateful black eyes.

The vampyre himself did not seem to care whether she turned or not; his expression shifted for a brief second before realigning to its usual appearance. If he were a human, she might have called him beautiful; she might have called his milk-white face ethereal. As it were, he looked almost as much of a ghost as each of the portraits.

"That is the first corpse I ever saw. She was lying face down in the street, an apple rolling from her fingers. Isn't it ironic that it was only until I saw your face that I remembered hers?"

The captive hated the word 'irony'. It seemed to haunt the darkangel and all he touched; it was a poison that killed just as quickly as it disillusioned. She was much happier when she hadn't known the word's dark meaning, when she hadn't been forced to stare at a painting and see the model's carcass rotting in the streets.

(A single red apple fell from the lifeless, pale hand.)

_Time was irrelevant to us_

_It passed, yes, I shall not deny that_

_But in a sense of how it passes for all immortal creatures_

_One sunrise meant nothing because there would always be another one_

_Years passed without either of us realizing it_

_Or caring, for that matter_

"Ryuzaki, no one within the market place has heard of the wives. They cannot have travelled in this direction." The boy addressed the darkangel with exasperation born of two years'-worth of familiarity.

The sun had long since set and vampyre and human stood upon the empty roadway, discussing their plans over an outdated map. The boy stood taller than he had two years prior. His grubby, poorly-tailored clothing fell down past his scabbed knees, obscuring the majority of his pale skin. In his hand he loosely carried a burlap sack of bruised crimson fruit.

"No? Are you sure your deductive reasoning is up to standard? You are, after all, very young." The darkangel's pseudo emotion caused the exasperated boy's lips to twitch into a smile before falling back into his discontent frown.

"If there were a vampyre, I would have known it, Ryuzaki. Weather seemed the primary topic of conversation today. If there had been a wraith within a ten mile radius, there would have been, as you say, 'pitchforks and torches.'" The boy's lips once again twitched; his golden eyes betrayed his mirth for a moment before falling back into monotony.

Two years prior, the words would never have escaped the boy's heavily-guarded mind, instead staying locked away for further analysis before wasting away into his overfilled subconscious. But time had twisted the pair, aligned their minds, and allowing words such as those to pass through the bridge between them.

The void between them was slowly but steadily closing shut.

"Correction, my young apprentice: Even if there were a darkangel in their midst, they would still deem it politically correct to talk of weather—even as they hung his body from the rafters. Humans are, after all, incredibly intolerant of my people." The icarus did not smile as he spoke, but Light did not fail to catch the humor within the words, the dark irony that often accompanied the darkangel's speech.

The child turned to stare back at the city, imagining as the inhabitants, the human inhabitants, tied the darkangel to the ceiling of a rotting building, leaving him to hang and thrash about as they set the wood alight. And as he envisioned the flames, he saw not the fearful faces of the mob outside, but the single face of the darkangel. Two years had done nothing to lessen his hatred of the vampyre.

"Forgive me, Ryuzaki. I forgot the tendency to revert to small talk while destroying one's oppressor."

The bridge between them did not buckle underneath the weight of hatred and origin; though the boy was young, he understood that even if he were to leave, he was not sure he would be able to find his way home. He had not been pushed off the edge of the abyss quite yet, and at this time, he was unwilling to jump.

"Most everyone does, Light-kun."

Darkangel and human stood on the edge of the void, each staring down into the darkness, searching in vain for a single source of light.

_His eyes changed from gold to black as the sun rose and set_

_Even at that young an age, his moods were unfathomable _

_Only his arrogance clouded the true potential from my view_

_It was his arrogance that blinded us all_

He did not always remember the names of the cities he visited, though the darkangel pronounced them clearly enough through his accented monotone. To him, they were all the same—the small villages and parishes houses identical, mothers and fathers as he would find anywhere.

They rarely ever bothered to give themselves a name; they were in themselves the middle kingdom, content with their small world and pleasures gained from it. Ambition was no virtue; a child did not leave his home except in the greatest need. Light Yagami was an anomaly among every place he had visited.

Tokyo was the same as Kyoto—the great empires they used to be were now dead. Rural communities were founded upon their ashes; small societies spread apart over vast distances, remembering nothing of their distant pasts. The olden days were buried beneath the years of amnesia that had plagued the land for centuries.

The buildings were made of makeshift plywood, the technique for building long since forgotten as the people continued to make do with what they had. They did not believe in improvement, as they felt that whatever they have was best, and resolved not to be greedy and ungrateful.

Even as he sat there, still and immovable, he felt the buildings begin to shake and totter on their foundations. Within five years, he knew they will collapse and fall into splinters. But before his eyes, he saw their joyful smiles and wondered briefly to himself if could ever remember being so happy.

The years before the darkangel were beginning to fade, replaced by hazy remembrances flitting about the edges of his mind. To him, there was hardly a time before Ryuzaki, before the darkangel stole him away from his rightful home. The faces of his mother and father seemed blurred next to the startling clarity of the darkangel.

The darkangel was his past and his future; nothing existed outside of those pale, dead eyes.

The boy's hand tightened around the bag of fruit, carefully tossing the contents to venders so they might be given away to its inhabitants. He did not entirely care if they were eaten or not. It was, after all, just a fruit, a chore to be performed for the darkangel, another one of his eccentricities that had to be fed every once in a while to keep the beast tame.

Over time, the darkangel had lapsed from the undead monster hiding in his nightmares into a more familiar—if still dark—creature known by the name of Ryuzaki. Giving himself a name which Light could pronounce had perhaps been a more manipulative act than either of them had guessed.

_Perhaps it was not until that year_

_That he truly began to see himself and me for what we were_

_Only in glimpses, of course_

_Outraged glimpses_

_But nonetheless, it was a shard of truth_

It was when Light Yagami reached the age of nine that he first encountered death in the form of a human. Before that moment death to him had been the darkangel, his constant companion, eccentric and cryptic death was distant as he was close. His eyes were sharp as ice and could pierce fear through the boy's soul at any moment.

Death to Light wore the pale features of his dark master, inky wings stretching out behind him as his colorless lips broke into a smile. He was cold and inhuman and strangely beautiful, his touch stealing of the life of all who were foolish enough to draw near. It wasn't until that year, that he had ever realized the true filth of the dead.

The body was that of a young girl, she laid face down in the street her eyes gritted with dirt, her dress soiled with blood. In her hand there rested a familiar fruit with a single bite within it. Her innocent features had not yet been ravaged by time and remained true to their human nature, and yet when the boy attempted to open her eyes they appeared dull and glassy. The single spark of thought gone from their depths leaving the retinas blank and empty.

The boy stood breathing heavily, his eyes widening as he looked down upon her. He lifted his head, searching about the city for some sign of life and seeing nothing but bodies. Dead and rotting carcasses lining the streets in sickening disarray, as if they had been tossed out with the morning's garbage. He reached down towards the girl, brushing her cheek slowly; feeling the icy skin beneath his fingers, skin just as perilously cold as the darkangel's.

The Icarus' face passed through his head once more, he saw his wives wasting away inside that cold room, he knelt down so as to get a better look at her face. At the corner of her lips there was a thin trail of blood, long since dried on her face.

He said nothing as he picked up the fruit, seeing the bruised red skin and the brown insides. He turned it over in his hand while his eyes strayed once more to the streets, the red fruits suddenly highlighted against the dark pavement. The apples had killed them, it was no more than a feeling and yet he was confident in his horror filled assumption.

The darkangel had killed them, _he _had killed them. He had handed them their death in the guise of an innocent if exotic delicacy. He had been just as blind and ignorant as them when he handed them the gift. Shrugging off whatever doubts he had about his master's intent, now he knew.

He didn't remember the girl, he must have seen her before, he must have smiled as he talked to her and marked her fate. He didn't remember a living human, he only saw a corpse.

"I'm alive." He said suddenly, his eyes widening slightly. He stood and backed from the corpse to lean against a building, his body shaking. He clutched the red fruit in his hand refusing to let go.

"I ate it and I am alive," he looked once more at the crimson fruit that he had thrown away so indifferently so arrogantly. He raised the apple to his lips and took a hesitant bite, "I am alive…"

He watched the corpse through half lidded eyes, no longer seeing her, instead seeing the milk-white face of the darkangel, smiling as he handed him another bushel of apples.

_We missed each other_

_I saw him every day of his life_

_And yet we did not understand each other_

_I knew his name_

_But I did not know his essence_

The boy did not tell the darkangel about the city of corpses or the apples. Even as he approached the fire shaking he would not open his mouth and tell the darkangel about the little girl he had seen, hardly younger than himself.

Even as he sat in front of the firelight he felt the darkangel's attention snap towards him, questioning the blank look on his young face. They said nothing even as the vampyre tossed the child a dead uncooked fish.

"I believe you are supposed to cook it, or something to that effect. If only you humans didn't need such constant coddling, it would make my life so much easier." The vampyre sighed, exasperated by his need to go out of his way to keep the boy alive.

"Was the fish so much trouble?" asked the boy, staring at the dead fish with the cold detatchment that consumed him.

"Yes, of course, I don't like water. It took ten minutes of my time to fish the damn thing out, my wings are still soggy… if only you could have been made of stone then I wouldn't have to feed you so often." The dark angel brought his thumb to his lips once more, pretending to muse over the idea while the child held the fish up in the light.

"You say that as if it were plausible Ryuzaki." The boy skewered the fish on a nearby stick, watching the blood slide out of the body before sticking it in the flames.

"Oh but Light-kun, it very well could be. Your heart as it were, is made of snow, it freezes the fingers off of everyone who touches it… All those little frostbitten fingers, falling off black and shriveled, as if they had been burned. It's hardly a step from that to being made completely of stone itself with only the elements left to erode you." The darkangel looked over at the child gauging his expression and giving a malicious grin.

"Ryuzaki, you have always told me I was nothing but a pathetic human." Whispered Light, his eyes haunted by the memory of the little girl's pale hand and the apple.

"You can turn into a rock Light-kun but you can't change your essence, the nature of your being, which is always beyond your control. Look at me; I'm a slouching-eccentric-intelligent-monster. I can't change it, and I don't really want to anyway. Human or stone changes nothing." The darkangel shrugged as if to make the apathy of the fates clearer through body language, not that the boy gave this any thought. His eyes were still glazed with the sight of corpses.

"And what is my nature Ryuzaki? Stone or human?" a wry smile played across the boy's lips, thinking of the countless villages he had trudged through diligently handing out death to his unsuspecting victims. Could a stone be so cruel as to hand out death with a smile and a wave.

The years had not changed him, but his views. He had forgotten the resentment for a smile such as the one he wore then, the way they detested his foreign features. His strange golden eyes that seemed haunted even as a small child. Travelling with the darkangel had allowed his views of humanity to lapse into something more comforting than what he had known before. He was such a good liar, that sometimes he could even fool himself.

"Perhaps both, perhaps neither. Maybe Light-kun, you are in reality nothing but a dead fish." The darkangel smiled as his eyes turned to the badly burnt fish, his thumb playing across the pale skin of his lips. The firelight nearly brought color to his icy eyes, casting a red shadow across their surface.

Neither of them realized how the icarus' inhuman looks deceived them.

_The wives_

_What is there to say about them?_

_Were the a ploy _

_A game?_

_Even I'm not sure at times, _

_Sometimes I think I was merely chasing my pride across Japan_

_Hidden in the guises of rotting corpses_

_Ah well, that's the price of intelligence_

The darkangel himself had a rather irregular schedule, half the time it seemed to Light that he wasn't even sure of where he was going, just so long as he went somewhere. Within the first two years of his coming to live with the darkangel Light saw nearly the whole of Japan. (Because as Ryuzaki continually insisted they could not have swum to China, no matter how long he had neglected to search for them.)

He never found a single bride in all the months they searched, the darkangel would return to camp exasperated and irate complaining on how eleven brainless twigs continued to deceive him. Perhaps they had finally died after all, their soulless bodies crumpling to dust under the weight of their hollow bones. Not a rumor, a whisper, a hint of wraiths came to the darkangel or the boy.

Eventually the day came when the vampyre returned empty handed yet again, and he simply threw his arms in the air and proclaimed that it simply wasn't worth it.

"If I want brides, I'll make new ones. After all, no one can tell the difference between one drained whore and the next. After all, what's eleven wasted years to me? I'm immortal, immortal Goddamit." Grinding his teeth the icarus turned his icy eyes towards the motionless boy sitting in front of him, "We're going home, I'm tired of tramping about the countryside like a regular pair of gypsies. Bring the food, I'm not going to waste my time feeding you _again_."

The boy raised his eyebrows standing slowly, taking the half eaten fish with him. Wondering if the parcel would last him a day, let alone the month necessary it would take to walk back to the darkangel's fortress on foot. Luckily (or unluckily in sight of the food it would provide) he had already sold most of the apples within the village they most recently passed, making the load slightly easier to carry.

The vampyre had a curious and irritating habit of walking rather than flying, as if he had an ingrained habit not to trust the inky feathers protruding from his back. Hunching his shoulders he would drag the lower most set of wings against ground, giving the boy quite the spectacle as they wandered about the outskirts of villages. His excuse being of course, that Light was simply too fat to fly with and would drag them down to their dooms.

A lie of course, but an obvious one. They all knew that Light was slowly but surely starving to death with the darkangel's help. The shortage of food was clearly displayed on his bony form, where one could make out the outline of ribs beneath his shirt. Without realizing it the boy had almost become a miniature of the darkangel himself. Pale skin highlighted against his dirt-streaked clothing and dark brown hair which hung over his eyes in a mangled fashion. Overall a starving child badly in need of a haircut and a few nights sleep. Certainly not one capable of travelling miles on end without stopping to rest or eat.

The darkangel remembered nothing of being human, whether it pertained to food, water, shelter or any of the other necessities of life. Like a slave master who expected too much he drove his apprentice at a grueling pace. Almost to the point of death on dozens of occasions, Light was born both lucky and unlucky, blessed and condemned.

The demands only skewed his view of humanity more, to the point of danger, almost completely forgetting the cruelty of ignorance. His father's harsh brown eyes, wrinkled with sun and age. He had forgotten their sharpened hatred and shame and the sight of his toddling sister, stumbling in his wake.

"How far is it Ryuzaki, to your home?" The boy paused before the word home because as the darkangel had said they had been gypsies for the past two years, home had become just as foreign to him as humanity. His feet shuffled against the dirt, callused with wear and travel they wore the dirt like a fine pair of socks. Painted brown and black with dust and bruises.

"Church Light-kun, it's a church. Not my home, I have no home." Corrected the vampyre his finger raised in amusement as he continued to walk forward his wingtips dragging behind, collecting soil as they went.

"Church? What's a church?" asked Light, his curiousity piqued at the thought of knowledge untainted by death and apples. The darkangel sighed slowly, seemingly exhausted by Light's lack of comprehension.

"I forgot humans were atheist nowadays, no religion to speak of, they probably don't think hard enough to consider a god." He shook his white head in annoyance before continuing, "It's a place of worship, a tribute to a higher power that supposedly controls the earth. This one happens to be a Catholic church I believe; although what it's doing in Japan I have no idea. Considering that at man's golden age Japan was primarily Buddhist. You can become acquainted with the bible when we get back; it is good reading for someone your age. Will give you something to ponder about other than how you're going to find the next dead fish."

Light had not yet reached the point where he would willingly display his full ignorance to the darkangel, instead he remained silent and morose. Thinking on all the terms he had never even heard of, Japan had been fairly new when he first met the vampyre. And soon the onslaught of words had started, a near completely different language from the one he had spoken. Inventions, countries, religions, all left to dust with the ashes of the old kingdoms. Their dark towers rising against the sun every morning, highlighting their forgotten past. The remnants of a fading history.

The boy himself had never been to the ruins of a great city, only to the living villages surrounding them. But he had seen their shadows, the great iron and steel skeletons that rose from the earth in immense pillars. Rust eating away at their hinges even as they stood dying together, the cemetery of memory.

Ryuzaki did not speak of the dead kingdoms often, only in wistful reminiscence and brief references. At times the boy was glad, glad he wouldn't have to look at that broken mirror of truth once more and see the single dusty shard within his own grasp. To be shoved once more in that cold room with his rotting wives. At times he both hated and adored the darkangel, he knew that the icarus could easily destroy him without a care in the world. And for that he would never forgive the creature.

But the bridge was closing, and he might no longer have the option.


	7. Chapter 7

The darkangel stood, his back to the world, his face to the stars. The light illuminated his auburn hair so that the woman standing behind him saw almost a glow surrounding his head, falling between his shadow wings. It reminded her of a tree that had been stained by lightning, its brown wood showing between the black scars.

She did not move out of his elongated shadow, still visible underneath the hidden moon; nor did she attempt to move closer. She saw the fires of his past—it was not the first time, and it would not be the last. It was fascinating and horrifying at once, like a piece of art—another drawing on his walls, another charcoal face from his past, hands covered in flowing blood.

She hated his drawings just as she hated his past, just as she hated his omniscient golden eyes that saw every thought she had. Every curse she wailed at him—caught from her lips, then thrown out again, as if they were not worth his notice. She tried not to talk to him in private, but it happened all the same.

He was frightening without his excuses, without his medical experiments. It was then that she truly saw him, masquerading as a young man with angel's dark wings, his golden eyes aged far beyond his years while his face still carried the weight of a child. What kind of a child is scarred by fire; what kind of a child bears his scars as inky wings that stretch across the horizon?

"Misora-san." His voice was clear and young, and yet it still carried its own weight. A storm rode through his words; a fire burned behind his dead brown eyes; and death itself died at his hands—his gloved, dark, bleeding hands that sketched so many memories onto his halls, that held his instruments with fanatical care.

He never took off the gloves. His hands were always black as his shadow, black as the night wings that surrounded him. It was as if he were made of black, with nothing but a waning moon for a face, half-hidden behind his long auburn hair. He was the night, he was death; he was the darkangel, beautiful in his inhumanity—in the way he seemed to dangle precariously between worlds. It was fascinating; it was horrifying.

Why couldn't she step from his shadow?

_They say they know me_

_But they do not_

_That is to say, you do not know me_

_You will never know me_

_Do not even pretend to understand me_

_You cannot know me if I do not know myself_

His shoes were falling apart, his knees were scraped and bleeding—but his amber eyes were bright when he walked among the trees with a crimson apple in his hand. He was still a boy, though his hair has grown longer and his clothes had grown smaller. The dirt collected between his pale toes and covered his long gangly limbs; he hardly noticed, still wandering about the blackened trees with vague curiosity emanating from his idle steps.

The darkangel, though he tried to nourish the orchard's life, knew that his touch brought death; his touch brought darkness and the end. It turned the trees to ash and their fruits to cores. He tried not to touch them, and yet the shrunken trees still shied away from his thin hands. They knew what kind of a touch the darkangel brought.

He was still frighteningly small, thin, but he did not seem to notice. No one cared for the darkangel's shadow, the boy with the golden eyes who seemed to follow the demon through the paths of life and death. Through flood and fire, he trailed behind the wingéd dæmon, an apple held between his hands as he ignored the dead bodies left behind. Oh, yes, he knew about the bodies. He could see them—and yet he still faltered from the dæmon's side, still strayed from the edge of the abyss.

He was still the starving child the darkangel had stolen for his own. Pale as marble, eyes as gold as the sun, he seemed almost an inhuman creature. A wingless daemon, whose shadow stretched to the horizon in an attempt to make up for the lack of feathers falling down his back. The boy couldn't feel their cold touch yet, but the world could see their shadow lurking in the center of his amber gaze. The humans could see but could not place the oddity so they watched him fear as he would enter their village days at a time, but that time had passed.

Perhaps the vampyre had seen the fear that grew in their eyes, the hatred as they watched the boy's back; perhaps he saw the pyres they built in their fertile minds. Perhaps he smelled the smoke that clouded the air in a thick haze, whatever his reason the darkangel seemed only frustrated in the mind of the child. He was still far too arrogant to see the strings that surrounded him, to see the complication of the darkangel's world.

He clouded his own mind with thoughts of his intelligence; he was blind to the white haired daemon who manipulated him so wholly. Tossing an apple into the boy's grasp with a thin-lipped smile, his crystal eyes glowing beneath the moonlight as he watched the boy struggle through the mountainous terrain, every thought concealed behind the mass of silver hair; the mountain's face hidden beneath its cloak of snow.

The boy is a shadow who did not speak and did not see, the trees know him they feel him sit down beside them, watch as his thin limbs grew longer and his malnourished mind continued to observe the world around him and yet still did not grasp it as they thought he could. He was still a child, a starving, weak child.

_Childish, yes he is childish_

_The world is a childish place_

_They expect us to act like children so we do_

_What else would the world want from us?_

The boy was practically illiterate, his golden eyes focused on the characters but found nothing in their inked footsteps, the meaning had passed from the yellowing pages leaving nothing but faded black corpses. The darkangel would hunch beside him, watching as his eyes narrowed and his hands shook the aged books in frustration. Then he would take the book out of the boy's hand and mention the dangers of aging paper.

Stubborn and proud the child tried all the same, even while the darkangel hovered behind, his breath-less presence illuminated by the brush of a shadowed feather; dark as the ink he couldn't decipher. Light could practically feel the smile written across his pale features, mocking pale smile that he had seen far too often for comfort. (The darkangel while not overtly expressive did show emotion at times, often to accent a situation, but it was a skill too subtle for a boy to notice.)

"That book is in Italian Light-kun, you speak a dialect of Japanese." The icarus would look down at the text in distaste and shake his head in mock disappointment, inwardly grinning at the look of hatred and irritation on his apprentice's face. He would turn with a harsh laugh and say nothing more, climbing the spiral stairs as he his way to the roof his wings dragging behind him as he climbed out of the boy's fiery view.

It was in that way that Light learned fourteen languages that he would never need to know. Every book, every word, he choked on so that he might stop that laughter that haunted him. He did not know how he ached for approval, how influential the darkangel's views were, he did not see how thoroughly manipulated he was. How twisted he was by the daemon's puppet strings, how his hands were ink-stained not for himself but for something far darker.

He pronounced each word with care, (L, _l_ was such a dangerous letter that must be treated with care… so easily turned into 'r') each letter could be bent if he didn't watch it carefully. And as he engrossed himself in his studies he almost missed the darkangel's winding shadow, he almost missed the clear eyes that surveyed him in a vague interest. He did not catch the faint smile that would touch the winged daemon's lips as he watched the boy write, read, and stutter with a terrifying dedication.

Japanese, Chinese, English, French, German, Latin… they passed through his mind at a blinding rate, each flying through as he poured himself over the daemon's novels and works of literature, the darkangel would look over his shoulder to see sloppily written words, slanted sentences, barely legible but written none the less. The apple's began to die once more under the icarus' care, they began to shrivel in his bare hands but the boy did not have the eyes to see the death in his hands. The familiarity was too bright, the languages were too consuming, he did not have the thought to spare for the darkangel's motives; the excuses were far too easy.

Humanity was even farther from his thoughts, only a vague semblance, every now and then would form of them. But the memories were distant and irrelevant and his ink stained hands seemed far more important than a few forgotten memories.

_The past is such an enigma_

_It is fascinating and time consuming_

_Which is perhaps the appeal to an immortal creature_

_Such as myself_

"What is God supposed to be, Ryuzaki?" asked Light Yagami with reluctance, he stood before the darkangel his face glued to the floor as he grit his teeth in frustration. He hated when he couldn't answer his own questions, it was like a slap to the face. But the books he read never explained it, they mentioned it, he, but he did not understand it.

And he hated that more than anything.

"Omniscient, omnipotent, omni-something. Don't worry God doesn't believe in you either, I doubt he even believes in himself anymore. Not important, and hardly relevant Light-kun; since when did you become interested in our heavenly father?" The darkangel was engrossed in his own story and Light haltingly read the title (the Inferno?) before he returned his attention back to the vampyre's still face as he carefully flipped through the text.

"I am not interested, merely curious. Ryuzaki, what is God?" The vampyre was ignoring Light and he knew it, it was a game and Light hated it because he always lost. The vampyre had too much experience on his side for a fair game between the two of them. Too many pieces were stacked upon the table, and Light loathed the sight of them.

The vampyre shut his book and sighed, he stood in his bent position and walked among the aisles of the building (he called them pews once or twice but did not explain why) moving through the benches where he stored the text haphazardly and eventually reached a much dusted over leather book and handed it to the boy. He looked at the cover in the candle light, attempting to make out the faded print that marked the title.

"The Holy Bible, later you can move to the Koran I believe I have that around here somewhere… And the Torah is here too if only I can find it… As for other religions, you can just focus on the God of Abraham for a while." The darkangel bit his thumb as he mused searching the crowded room with pale eyes, glancing over the broken benches filled with thousands of books, the candelabras that constantly dripped onto the floor and looked as if they were about to run out, and of course the stained glass windows depicting men and women Light could barely pronounce. Old names, foreign names, they didn't seem so exotic anymore.

The darkangel eventually moved from his perch on the benches to make his way towards another room, away from the boy, but the child hardly noticed his eyes moving through the faded print with as much determination and drive as any full grown darkangel.

Even as a child Light Yagami showed far too many traits of an icarus, if one were to look closely behind the fire of the boy's eyes they might see the icarus' pale reflection, the daemon's cold blank eyes staring out from behind amber lenses watching the world impassively. Apathetic they do not act and the boy continues to work, blissfully unaware of his own crystal gaze.

_I don't know how long I dragged him across creation_

_I don't particularly care_

_He never complained and neither did I_

_It was never a waste of his time_

_Or mine_

He made his own clothing. During the cold winter months, when the snow covered the earth and the dark angel became gloomy with the cold he would sit beside the window and carefully stitch together a new overcoat his limbs shaking from the snow-fall. Fabric swarmed around him as he attempted to transform himself into a tailor with small precise stitches from his shaking hands. Once he had tolerated the cold with ease, though he did not remember such a time his mind was so enamored with the present. But his body had begun to grow weak against the cold, the vampyre's hands brought more than winter's death and Light Yagami had begun to dimly feel their effects.

(Gloves, he wore gloves so that the frost might not steal his fingers as he tried to fish through the ice-river. Attempting desperately to keep himself alive underneath the darkangel's negligence and apathy.)

It was always cold during those winter days; he lit fires and huddled beside them warming his fingers with their burning touch breathing out the early morning mist that covered the mountains and valleys he remembered so clearly. His scribe's hands would halt in their stitches, ink-covered, to shake uncontrollably with the numbness that seemed almost living in the air. Bringing white to the land regardless of the death it caused underneath its cool touch.

He ate what he could, hare, fish, anything he could find. The darkangel had been known to leave Light to die, winter was no different situation. Survival heeded the boy's word alone and would not bow to the vampyre and Light did not see the need to be taken care of. Starving, freezing, Light Yagami survived on the edge of illness and death working himself to the bone as he attempted to burn bright against the winter's snow covered face and harsh sunlight. A single candle's flame drifting ever closer to the wick's end.

"You make too much noise sitting like that, huddled against a fire shaking yourself to pieces. Calm down and sit still, you're giving me a migraine." In winter the Darkangel was irate his analytical mind picking fights at every turn, but the boy so keen on his survival ignored the jabs and would continue to shake uncontrollably his mind drifting to other, darker, colder winter nights.

The darkangel would stare, blink for a moment, then sit down beside the boy and watch with a vaguely amused expression as Light Yagami fell to pieces, piece by shivering piece. The darkangel's eyes locked with the boys and searched for the hatred he remembered so well, the hatred the boy had laid aside (but not forgotten, the child had never truly forgotten.) and they would watch each other, daring the other to break the moment first. Vampyre and human their bitter rivalry conveyed within a single glance, the darkangel would smile and say nothing.

Nothing at all.

The clothes never fit, the gloves were too big, the tunics were too loose, the pants covered his feet but with each stitch in the fabric he became closer to the perfection he desired. Light desired perfection most of all, even in a single tailor's stitch.

_You ask for my name_

_I give you a feather_

_You ask for my thoughts_

_I give you a dead flower_

_You ask for me_

_I give you ashes_

The months grew long, the sun grew bright, and the year neared its end. Closing itself in its seasonal circle, shutting out the last rays of sunlight as fall struck home again. L as he called himself, did not lie without reason and often his lies were hidden among the honesty of his words. He had lost all his wives.

The fifth of November drew close and he found himself staring out at the fall leaves, escaped fires consumed by the earth and painted by the wind. His mind drifted past his apprentice and past his searches for the brides to the point where he no longer cared. Determination drove him and he needed the brides, if only for trophies.

Black wings dark as night, eyes as cold as ice, he did not understand the word of cruelty and so he refused to encompass it. He was merely driven, and that was all.


	8. Chapter 8

His raven's wings spread behind him like a great shadow that had been born of night shade and the shadow of starlight. He was the night god, the dark unseen face of the moon, the snow on the dark mountains hovering in the distance. God, darkangel, daemon, reaper the words seemed to blend together in a tangled knot; one string completely inseparable from the other.

The boy was young, he had lost count of his age but his features were far from that of a man, the vampyre had never asked for an age and therefore the child had not deemed it important enough to tell him. (And in a way that was a correct assumption, after all, what is age but irrelevant to a being that is immortal?) And it would not be until he was far older, his mind more experienced and his hands scarred by fortune that he would realize his folly in forgetting his own age.

The autumn days continued and Light watched, through half-lidded eyes as the darkangel turned from his tower, acknowledging Light's presence for the first time in weeks. The leaves alight like fire, were such a contrast to the darkangel's wintry gaze, highlighting his whiteness with their cold fire.

"I'll be leaving, for a few days, I'm sure you've learned to survive without me Light-kun." The darkangel's smile was brief, the boy didn't move watching the shift of expression on the vampyre's features. His own amber eyes were sharp even through their contentment, hidden behind the long strands of hair that covered his eyes. Both boy and the angel surveyed the world from the rooftop, watching the autumn sun set into the hills and the leaves turn to shades of ember.

"Are you going to come back Ryuzaki?" The boy had grown clever enough to understand the silence between the darkangel's words. The hint of abandonment resting on the immortal's tongue, slipping through the cracks of his lies. The darkangel turned his crystal gaze growing amused, yes the boy was clever he had heard the lies, but he had misunderstood them.

"Yes, I will be coming back, haven't you learned some independence by now? What are you twelve, eleven? You should be able to keep yourself alive by now." The vampyre stretched his wings to their full span, blotting out the red sun with their mass, he turned to look at the boy over his shoulder. Thin and jaded the boy was turning into the man he would one day become, his amber eyes dark as the bleeding sunset, his face covered in shadows he shouldn't have owned. The darkangel never stopped to wonder, even as he took off from the roof when his eyes had come to own so many shadows.

The boy stood, watching the ink feathers fade into the horizon, sucking in the light from the sky. His gloved hands clasped behind his back he stayed to watch the sun sink beneath the earth and the world turn bright with stars. A single figure on the shadowy land he stood, a star in his own right, on a roof refurbished in a bored whim. He stood, watching for a shadow on the moon, the return of his master and mentor. Eventually the night would turn cold and the boy would return to the inside of the building, lighting a fire to ease his aching hands and anxious mind. He would wait, not yet questioning the fact that he waited, and it would not be until a week had passed that he would see the night dark wings again.

_Light_

_Such an ironic name to have given him_

_I would have named him something much different_

_Adam perhaps_

_I would never have given him a name so fickle as light_

He held a girl in his arms, a shaking, weeping, crying maiden who seemed to be falling apart. She looked pale, as if the life were being sucked out of her through the darkangel's bony hands, the cold that has no choice but to eat the life that ran through her human veins. Tears streaked down her cheeks and stained the torn dress she wore. Her eyes were ringed in red and yet despite this she looked as if she were dying, transparent in a darkangel's winter arms.

The boy watched their descent in confusion, watching the girl in the darkangel's arms with narrowed eyes of gold. Their feet touched the rooftop and the girl fell from the vampyre's arms onto the thin material of the roof, crying out in pain as she did so. The helped to support her, glaring at the darkangel as he did so, hiding the confusion from his eyes before the darkangel could mock him for it.

"Careful with her, I think she might be sea-sick." The girl hid into Light's arms at the sound of L's voice, shrieking in terror at the monotone. She clutched at the boy's poorly stitched clothes tightly, clinging to the familiarity of his heartbeat.

"Where did you find her?" He asked slowly, staring down at her dark windswept hair, his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides having long since lost the instinct to shield the girl from the darkangel's wrath.

"Some poor village, where else would I find her? The flight took three days, and I feel exhausted, me, who hasn't slept in decades." The icarus ignored the girl, contenting himself to leave her shaking in his apprentice's youthful arms, making his way toward the spiral stairs that would lead him inside the sanctuary.

"What exactly do you want me to do with her?" The boy attempted to stand, supporting the weeping girl in his arms her tears staining his poorly stitched clothing. The icarus never turned, never looked back, but left the weeping girl with the boy, a cruel smile painting his lips.

"I'm sure you'll think of something boy," he whispered to himself as he descended the stairs into darkness, laughing as he viewed the morning sun that hung so delicately in the sky, the girl's time was short, such a fine strand of cloth, so easily cut by the fates.

And who was L but a child of fate, a god of death, a darkangel, his hands held an all too exacting knife, such a pity not to use it.

_Cruel_

_Am I cruel?_

_Perhaps, but then we are all cruel_

_And deep in his fluttering heart_

_I'm sure he knew exactly what he was doing_

She babbled too fast for him to understand, her words were nonsense, trapped between sobs as she buried herself in his shoulder. He had not seen another human for years, she looked so dark against his pale skin, so full of life and vigor, nothing compared to his own sickly reflection. Her eyes laden with tears reflected the innocence he had never known, and he found himself fascinated despite his pride.

Her hair was a dark brown and her eyes were almost black, her skin was the color of the bark on summer trees, an explosion of color in a world of black and white. So out of character in the darkangel's world, the lifeless world where even the sky seemed to die, trapped as it was behind the layer of clouds.

The words didn't matter, but they came anyway, pleading, desperate words that engulfed him, she spoke far too quickly. Hysterical, panicked, desperate human longing for escape from her prison. She ran about the room searching for a way out, a way to return to the home, a trapped bird fluttering about her cage.

"Where did he find you?" The boy asked, his golden eyes watching her rock back and forth in a frantic rhythm, her head shaking back and forth as the tears trailed down her face, the dirt and blood staining her clothing. So different from Light's pristine appearance, emanating cold from his unblemished clothing and his golden eyes. But she did not see his eyes, too busy shutting her mind against the darkangel, the monster, the icarus.

"My village, is far from here, far far away, and I won't—he'll eat me, he's going to eat me, he's going to tear my heart out." She sobbed, screamed, almost unaware of the cool eyed questioner, the boy that was not a boy, the apprentice of the icarus, "I'm going to die, why am I going to die? He's a—monster, he's a monster!"

The boy said nothing, he did not reassure her, he doubted L would kill her after all the darkangel would have killed her already if he had wanted her corpse. Ryuzaki was an impatient creature, he waited for nothing, why would he wait for her death? And yet he held his tongue for fear of lying, the boy's golden eyes saw enough to fear, the darkangel wore far too many masks.

Her eyes lifted to his impassive face, growing wide at the sight of his golden eyes surrounded by shadows, a demon's eyes, she saw a child, a starving pitiful child with eyes too dark to be human. Eyes filled with a dark light that was unheard of, like the first rays of sunlight over the horizon, a fading star in the north, not the eyes of a child.

The boy saw her fear, his hand retreated back into his lap watching them, fragile and pale they looked nothing like her coarse brown hands, they fit in the icarus's world among the aging books and dusting windows, they did not belong to the human world. He had been transformed into an aged piece of parchment, unheard of outside the vampyre's stone walls, he had no existence outside of the icarus.

He existed within a cloud of midnight feathers, his hands reaching out for the sunlight that could not exist for him, that refused to exist for his darkened state. The girl, with her dark skin and dark eyes was that flash of sunlight, illuminating the shadows on his skin, revealing the feathered walls of his prison.

"Tell me what your home was like." His child's voice was demanding, hungry for that glimpse of sunlight in the darkness that surrounded him, his golden eyes closed as he leaned back imagining the home he could no longer remember, the human faces that had all but faded from his memory. The golden hills in his mind were so far from the village he had grown up in, idealized in his absence, left forever in the sunrise.

"My mother will be baking the bread, and my father… he will be stitching the clothing. My brother will be running in the fields outside our village, and I would be… Pretty, the leaves will be falling, and it will be near the harvest time, we have a wonderful harvest festival…"

Her words were disjointed and childish, still the boy's golden eyes remained closed his mind envisioning the golden hills he longed for, imagining the springtime he had seen only at a distance, the bloom of life against even the most oppressive snows of winter, youth, life, love, all held within his mind against the dead eyes of the icarus.

"My home, is far from this place." He whispered, far from his existence a place beyond the horizon, beyond the edge of the world, an Eden at the bottom of the abyss he could see the golden fields from the cliff's edge, such a long fall would be painful.

She did not respond to his statement, absorbed in her own loss of freedom, her own terror and suffering, but the boy with his eyes closed envisioned the peace of mind he created for himself. That idealized place held within his mind, the elysian fields stretching into oblivion, a smile on his pale face. For even the apprentice felt the cold hands of death, even he felt the life stem from his veins, and resisted the urge to fall back to dust.

The candle light was not kind to the pair, the human and the apprentice of the vampyre painting them as black and white. The girl in her torn white dress, her skin dark against the rough surface of the fabric, the boy wearing the dark colors he had grown used to his white skin like moonlight upon it. His features were painted to sharply by the golden glow, masking the childishness of his eyes, accenting the veins in his hands to the girl he looked like death himself.

And in a sense, it was an apt description.

_He sewed the wedding dresses_

_The white ribbons and the veils were his design_

_Childish and plain they suited them well_

_His hand was far too adept at crafting death in the form of stitching_

He wore the dark colors, muted with shadows it brought out his moonlit skin, she had never questioned it. Never questioned the dusky garments he wore, the shadows that covered all but his face. It had never bothered her before, after all, what was one more unexplained habit of the darkangel?

"Why do you wear so much black?" he was layered in shadows, complex shadows she could never have imagined stitching, folding itself around the great black wings with the illusion of ease, an extension of night.

There were some questions he refused to answer, some questions he chose to ignore no matter how she pressed, some secrets he would never disclose to her, his past shown through fogged windows, meant only to be hinted at but never to be shown. Yet another charcoal drawing lit by dim candle light.

"Why not? Black is a fine color." The icarus's words seemed always to be laced with that bitter sense of irony, the humor she had never heard in another's words but seemed to belong exclusively to him, the irony was for the icarus alone.

"You aren't answering the question." She hated him for his ambiguity, the bluntness he lacked, the good nature he lacked, every question had two answers, each word had two meanings.

"White is so easily stained by the ills of the world, so easily turned to blood. The dark colors are far easier to keep clean, less corrupted by humanity's stain." He smiled faintly before he turned away once more to ignore her, his amber eyes concealing secrets far too dark to be guessed at, his mind contained in the labyrinth of memories she dared not enter.

She knew better than to try to open the locked door.


End file.
